Long Service Leave Calculator

Why this is state law and not federal

Long service leave is not part of the National Employment Standards. It sits entirely in state and territory legislation, which is why there is no single national rule and why the answer changes when you cross a border. Annual leave and redundancy are federal. This one is not.

Two exceptions matter. A federal pre-modern award or an enterprise agreement can override the state Act entirely, sometimes in your favour and sometimes not, so check your instrument before assuming the state default applies. And portable schemes exist in industries where people routinely move between employers, namely building and construction, contract cleaning, community services, security, and coal mining nationally. Under those, your accrual follows you rather than your employer, and you may need to register with the scheme administrator instead of relying on payroll to track it.

How the eight jurisdictions compare

South Australia and the Northern Territory are the outliers on money. At 1.3 weeks a year they accrue about 50% more than the six jurisdictions sitting on 0.8667. Fifteen years in Adelaide is 19.5 weeks. The same fifteen years in Sydney or Brisbane is 13. That is more than a month and a half of paid time, for identical work.

Victoria and the ACT are the outliers on time. Both let you take the leave at 7 years rather than 10. They accrue at the same 0.8667 a year as most of the country, so the ACT figure people quote, 6.0667 weeks, is simply what 7 years at that rate comes to. It is not a smaller entitlement, it is the same entitlement measured three years earlier.

The Territory has one more quirk worth knowing: it counts completed years only, so part years accrue nothing. Nine years and eleven months in Darwin is treated as nine. If you are close to an anniversary there, staying a few more weeks is worth a full 1.3 weeks of leave.

What continuous service actually means

Continuous service does not mean you worked every day without a break. It means the employment relationship with the same employer, or a qualifying successor, never ended. Approved paid leave does not break it. Neither does a stand down or a temporary shutdown where the relationship continues, nor a transfer when a business is sold as a going concern, nor moving between registered employers under a portable scheme.

What does break it is resigning and being re-engaged, even by the same employer, unless they agree to recognise your prior service. Dismissal for serious and wilful misconduct also ends the entitlement in most jurisdictions.

There is a third category that catches people: unpaid leave generally does not break continuity, but those weeks do not count towards the accrual either. Your relationship survives, your clock pauses. Six months of unpaid leave means six months that never accrue.

Casuals are covered in most states and territories. The test is whether the engagement has been regular and systematic across the qualifying period, not what your contract calls you. If you have worked steady hours for the same employer for the best part of a decade, do not assume you have nothing.

Pro rata on termination, and the NSW five-year rule

Pro rata means a proportional payment for what you have accrued, even though you never reached the full qualifying period. It is the part most people do not know they have.

New South Wales is the standout, at 5 years. Nowhere else in the country opens this early. It applies where your employer ends your job for any reason other than serious and wilful misconduct, or where you resign because of illness, incapacity, domestic or other pressing necessity, or where you die and it is paid to your estate. If you are in NSW and past five years, you have something, and a lot of people walk away from it without asking.

Everywhere else it starts at 7 years. In Victoria and the ACT that is academic, because 7 years is also when the full entitlement unlocks. Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all require the reason for termination to meet set criteria. Tasmania is the friendliest of the group, where it is automatic on reaching retirement age, on death, or where the employer ends the job for anything other than serious and wilful misconduct. The Northern Territory is the strictest, generally limited to resignations caused by illness, incapacity or pressing necessity, so a plain resignation there gets you nothing before ten years.

If you are approaching 7 years anywhere, or 5 years in New South Wales, work out where you stand before you hand in a resignation. The order of events can be worth thousands.