From 6 August 2028, your annual leave bill
It costs you $4,167 a year, from 6 August 2028.
7 people, 4 of them casual, on a wage bill of $303,888. Under the Holidays Act their leave costs you $32,027 a year; under the Employment Leave Act, $36,194. That is +1.37% of payroll.
Where it comes from
Three separate changes, and they do not all point the same way. Bars are drawn to scale against each other; the centre line is no change.
A bar to the right costs you more after commencement; a bar to the left saves you money. The net of the three is the figure above.
Person by person
Biggest movers first, in either direction — a report sorted by name buries the rows worth looking at.
| Name | Hours | Rate now | Rate after | Sick leave | Change / yr | % of pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barista | 24 casual | — | $26.00 | — | +$1,460 | +4.50% |
| Waiter | 20 casual | — | $25.50 | — | +$1,193 | +4.50% |
| Kitchenhand | 18 casual | — | $24.00 | — | +$1,011 | +4.50% |
| Waiter | 16 casual | — | $25.50 | — | +$955 | +4.50% |
| Cook | 30 over 4d | $29.00 | $29.00 | 75 h → 60 h | −$434 | −0.96% |
| Head chef | 40 + 6 over 4d | $41.40 | $36.00 | 100 h → 80 h | −$179 | −0.21% |
| Manager | 40 + 2 over 5d | $33.60 | $32.00 | 80 h → 80 h | +$161 | +0.23% |
| 7 people | wage bill $303,888 | +$4,167 | +1.37% | |||
This is the line everybody has read about. Hours worked outside an agreed pattern stop attracting 8% holiday pay and start attracting a 12.5% leave compensation payment instead — four and a half points on every one of those hours. It is the only line that moves in one direction for everybody, and if your workforce is mostly casual it is the whole answer.
The part nobody writes about. The Holidays Act pays annual leave at the greater of ordinary weekly pay and average weekly earnings, and average weekly earnings includes overtime — so if your people work overtime you are already paying above base rate for every hour of leave they take. The new Act pays a single rate. That comparison disappears, and so does the money it was costing you.
Ten days becomes hours, and that is a bigger change than it sounds. A day of sick leave today is whatever that person would otherwise have worked, so somebody on three twelve-hour shifts gets ten twelve-hour days — 120 hours. Under the new Act the same roster accrues 0.0385 hours per standard hour, which is 72. If you run long shifts, this is where your saving is.
That figure is what casual and additional hours go up by, not what a business goes up by, and the two are only the same if every hour you pay for is casual. Yours comes to +1.37%. The gap is the annual leave and sick leave lines pulling the other way.
+$1,460 a year on their own, which is +4.50% of what you pay them. They have no agreed hours, so every hour they work goes from 8% to 12.5%. Every row is in the table below, biggest movers first in either direction.
What this will not tell you
- Any individual's entitlement. That is a payroll system's job and a lawyer's job, and getting it wrong costs somebody their holiday pay. This prices a workforce in aggregate under two sets of rules.
- What your agreements need to say. Employment agreements have to be compliant by 6 August 2029 and that is a legal question about your wording, not an arithmetic one.
- The effect of pay changes you have not made yet. Everything here prices a year of the workforce you typed in, at today's rates, under both regimes. It is a comparison, not a forecast.
- Anything below 3 people. The rows are still shown, but not the percentage of payroll — on one or two people that swings entirely on whether they happen to work long shifts, and it is the number that gets quoted.
- Your actual roster. It prices average weekly hours. If your hours swing hard between seasons, run your peak and your trough separately and look at both.
The rates come from the Employment Leave Act 2026: 0.0769 hours of annual leave and 0.0385 hours of sick leave per standard hour, a 160-hour sick leave cap, and a 12.5% leave compensation payment on additional and casual hours. The comparison is against the Holidays Act 2003: four weeks a year paid at the greater of ordinary weekly pay and average weekly earnings, ten days of sick leave, and 8% holiday pay on hours that do not accrue leave.
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