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Check your actual pay against the award minimum for the exact hours you worked, including weekend and public holiday penalty rates, on the 1 July 2026 rates.
Hours in one pay period
Paid at 175% for the first 3 hours and 225% after that.
Use the gross figure on your payslip, before tax and before any deductions.
You were paid
$1,000
Award minimum
$1,432
Difference for 38 hours
−$432
You averaged $26.32/hr against an award minimum of $37.69/hr across this mix of hours.
If every pay period looks like this one, that's about $22,472 a year. The Fair Work Ombudsman can help you recover underpaid wages, and it's free.
Fair Work Ombudsman — unpaid or underpaid workHow the minimum is built
| Ordinary hours | 30h × $34.76 | $1,043 |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 8h × $48.67 | $389 |
Award rates are the adult minimums effective 1 July 2026, following the 2026 Fair Work Commission annual wage review. Penalty multipliers are structural features of each award. Always confirm your own classification against the official pay guide.
This calculator is not intended to be relied on for the purposes of making a decision in relation to a financial product. Before you make a financial decision, consider obtaining advice from someone who holds an Australian Financial Services Licence. We do not, and we cannot advise you.
Most underpayment isn't an employer paying below the minimum wage outright — that's obvious enough to spot. It's penalty rates: an employee works Sundays or public holidays and gets paid a flat hourly rate for every hour, when the award requires a higher rate for those hours. The pay looks reasonable against the base rate, so nobody questions it.
The other common causes are casual loading not being paid, junior or apprentice rates being applied to someone who isn't one, and unpaid time — opening up, closing down, handovers and training that fall outside rostered hours but are still work.
Compare the gross pay on your payslip against the award minimum for the exact hours you worked, including any evenings, weekends or public holidays. A flat hourly rate that never changes regardless of when you work is the most common sign of an underpayment, because most awards require higher rates for those hours.
Raise it with your employer first, in writing, with your payslips and hours attached — many underpayments are payroll errors and get fixed straight away. If that doesn't resolve it, the Fair Work Ombudsman investigates underpayment claims for free, and you can make an anonymous report if you'd rather not be identified.
Underpayment claims can generally go back six years from when the underpayment occurred. That's why keeping payslips and your own record of hours matters — the further back a claim goes, the more it depends on evidence you kept at the time.
No. It compares your gross pay for a period against the award minimum for those hours. Allowances (uniform, laundry, travel, tool and meal allowances among others), leave entitlements and superannuation are separate obligations, and this check doesn't test any of them. Being paid correctly for your hours doesn't mean everything else is right.
No. This is an information tool built on the published Fair Work award rates. It can't account for your registered agreement, your exact classification, annualised salary arrangements or the facts of your particular employment. For advice about your situation, contact the Fair Work Ombudsman or a union or employment lawyer.
Estimates only. Not financial or tax advice. Full disclaimer for your rights and our limitations of liability.
This calculator exists to show you the arithmetic. It applies published Australian rates, thresholds and formulas to the numbers you enter and shows the working, so you can check it. That is all it does — it produces a number and describes what the number is. It does not recommend anything and it holds no opinion about any financial product.
What can move this result
This calculator is not intended to be relied on for the purposes of making a decision in relation to a financial product. Before you make a financial decision, consider obtaining advice from someone who holds an Australian Financial Services Licence. We do not, and we cannot advise you.
This tool provides information, not legal or industrial advice. It can't account for registered agreements, annualised salary arrangements, allowances or the facts of your employment. If you think you've been underpaid, the Fair Work Ombudsman is the right place to go, and their help is free. You can also work through the Award Pay Calculator to see how a full week is built up.