Employment Type Calculator Australia

A permanent employee is paid the base rate for ordinary hours, plus paid leave and job protections. A casual is paid the same base rate plus a loading, the standard rate being 25%, per Fair Work’s casual employment guidance. On a $30 base rate that means $37.50 an hour as a casual.

The calculator multiplies each hourly rate by your weekly hours and 52 weeks to get annual gross, then runs both figures through the 2026-27 resident tax scale, Medicare levy included, to get take-home pay. The casual figure assumes you actually work all 52 weeks. A permanent is paid for 52 weeks while working 48, because 4 weeks of paid annual leave sit inside the salary.

Awards and agreements set the exact loading and casual rates for each classification, and some set specific casual rates rather than a clean 25%. Check your award via Fair Work’s Pay and Conditions Tool, and use the casual loading calculator to work the loading in isolation, or the hourly pay calculator for one rate on its own.

Sources: Fair Work Ombudsman, casual employees and National Employment Standards guidance; Fair Work Act 2009 ss86-87 for annual leave. Some states add long service leave for long-serving casuals.

Start with the arithmetic. Four weeks of paid annual leave is 7.7% of a 52-week year, so a permanent is paid roughly 7.7% more per hour worked than their base rate suggests. The 25% loading clears that hurdle with room to spare, which is why the cash comparison above favours casual.

The rest of the trade is harder to price. Paid sick and carer’s leave has no fixed cash value until you need it, and then it is worth everything. Notice of termination and redundancy pay only pay out when the job ends. A casual can also be rostered down without the protections a permanent has, so the loading partly prices insecurity, not only leave.

The honest answer depends on your situation. A student working around a timetable may rationally prefer the loaded rate. Someone supporting a family on one income usually values the sick leave, the notice period and the predictability more than the 25% premium. The calculator gives you the cash half of that decision; the entitlements table above is the other half.

There is no casual tax scale and no permanent tax scale. Both are taxed through the 2026-27 resident brackets on whatever they gross, with the 2% Medicare levy on top. The casual in the worked example pays more tax than the permanent, $14,232 against $9,379, purely because the loading lifted the gross.

Superannuation treats the types identically too. The 12% super guarantee for 2026-27 is paid on ordinary time earnings for casuals and permanents alike, on top of the wage. The loading does not replace super; it raises the earnings base super is calculated on.

One practical difference: casual hours vary, and payday withholding on a big week is estimated as if that week were typical. Over a year of uneven weeks the withholding rarely matches the tax on your actual annual income, and the difference settles when you lodge. Withheld is the estimate, owed is the assessment, and for casuals with variable hours the gap usually ends as a refund.

The National Minimum Wage rose to $26.44 an hour ($1,004.90 a week), an increase of about 6%, while minimum award wages rose 4.75%, both from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026. The two percentages differ because the Commission is phasing out the lowest C13 classification, and the National Minimum Wage is pegged to it. Most workers are award-covered, so 4.75% is the relevant rise for most.

For casuals, the loading maths follows automatically: 25% on a higher base rate is more dollars per hour, and the minimum casual rate became $33.05. The entry-level C14 award rate moved to $25.74 an hour for the first 6 months of employment.

On the tax side, the first marginal rate fell from 16% to 15% for 2026-27, which lifts take-home in both columns of this calculator. The super guarantee held at 12%, paid on top for both employment types.

• Fair Work Ombudsman, Minimum wages and Minimum wages increase from 1 July 2026, both updated 1 July 2026: the $26.44 hourly and $1,004.90 weekly National Minimum Wage, the 4.75% award increase, and the C14 entry rate.
• Fair Work Commission, Annual Wage Review 2026 decision ([2026] FWCFB 3500), announced 2 June 2026.
• Fair Work Ombudsman, casual employees guidance: the 25% standard casual loading, what casuals do and do not receive under the National Employment Standards, and the conversion pathway.
• Fair Work Act 2009 ss86-87: 4 weeks of annual leave, pro-rata for part-time, 5 weeks for qualifying shiftworkers.
• ATO, individual income tax rates for 2026-27, and the superannuation guarantee at 12% on ordinary time earnings.

Last verified 23 July 2026.