Casual loading is an extra 25% added to your base hourly rate under most modern awards, paid to casual employees instead of paid annual leave, personal leave and other entitlements permanent staff receive. It is not a bonus for flexibility — it is compensation for the leave and job security you give up.
Why casuals get paid more per hour
A permanent employee's hourly rate already has annual leave, personal leave, public holiday pay and notice-of-termination rights built into their overall package, even though those are paid separately. A casual employee gets none of that — no paid leave, and generally no notice or redundancy pay. The 25% loading is meant to roughly offset the value of what is missing, so the two employment types land in a similar place over a full year, at least on paper.
What 25% actually looks like in dollars
Take a Level 1 retail employee on the 2026-27 base rate of $27.81 an hour:
- Permanent rate: $27.81/hour
- Casual rate: $27.81 × 1.25 = $34.76/hour
- Difference: $6.95 an hour, or about $264 a week on a standard 38-hour week
Over a full year of 38-hour weeks, that is roughly $13,740 in extra gross pay for the casual employee compared with the exact same hourly base rate paid to a permanent. See your own numbers, including take-home pay after tax, with the Award & Fair Work Pay Calculator.
Where casual loading stacks with other penalties
Casual loading is not just added once — it is baked into the casual penalty multipliers you see on payslips for evenings, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. A retail casual working a Sunday shift is paid 175% of the base rate, which is the 150% permanent Sunday penalty plus the 25% loading rolled together, not two separate additions. The full multiplier breakdown by award is in our guide to penalty rates in Australia.
One award breaks that pattern: under the Restaurant Industry Award, casual Sunday pay stays at 150%, the same as Saturday — the loading is not stacked on top of the Sunday rate. Always check your specific award rather than assuming every casual rate follows the same formula.
Is casual loading actually worth it?
It depends on how consistent your hours are. The loading is calculated to compensate for lost leave entitlements on the assumption you work steadily. If your hours are irregular or seasonal, the extra 25% can genuinely leave you ahead, because you are paid more per hour worked and were never going to accrue much leave anyway. But if you work close to full-time hours every week for the same employer over a long period, you may be giving up more in job security, leave and predictability than the 25% makes up for — which is part of why long-term casuals in many industries now have a pathway to convert to permanent employment.
A quick comparison over a year
Assume 38 hours a week, 48 weeks worked (allowing for some weeks off), at the retail Level 1 rate:
- Permanent: $27.81 × 38 × 48 = $50,668 gross, plus paid annual leave and personal leave on top
- Casual: $34.76 × 38 × 48 = $63,342 gross, with no paid leave at all
The casual figure looks higher, but the permanent employee also banks around four weeks of paid annual leave and ten days of personal leave a year that do not show up in that gross number — worth roughly $4,200 at this rate for annual leave alone.