How Overtime Pay Works Under Australian Awards

There is no percentage in the Fair Work Act 2009 that says "overtime is paid at 150%". The Act sets the floor — the National Minimum Wage and the ten National Employment Standards — but the multiplier itself comes from your award, agreement or contract. The Act even signals this itself: in listing the factors for whether extra hours are reasonable, it refers to "whether the employee is entitled to receive overtime payments, penalty rates or other compensation" (art. 62(3)(d)). That reference only makes sense because the rate is set elsewhere — in the industrial instrument that covers you.

So the practical model is a two-layer one. The law guarantees a floor; your award builds the overtime structure on top of it. Miss the award and you are guessing.

Before a single overtime dollar can be calculated, you have to pass what we call the award gate: which modern award (or enterprise agreement) covers your classification? The answer depends on your employer's industry and your own occupation, through each award's coverage clause. Where a registered enterprise agreement exists, it applies in place of the modern award.

This is not bureaucratic box-ticking. Two employees doing similar hours under different awards can be owed very different amounts, because the trigger for overtime and the percentages differ from one award to the next. Until your award is identified — by its reference (for example MA000002) and its dated version — no multiplier can be applied to your case. What can always be calculated, meanwhile, is the 1:1 floor: every hour worked but unpaid, at your ordinary rate.

To see how an award defines overtime in practice, take the Clerks—Private Sector Award 2020 [MA000002] as an illustration only — your award may set entirely different triggers. Under clause 21.1, an employer must pay the overtime rate for hours worked at the employer's direction:

• in excess of the ordinary weekly hours; or
• in excess of 10 ordinary hours on any one day, excluding unpaid meal breaks; or
• outside the spread of ordinary hours.

Notice how specific this is. Overtime is not simply "anything over 38 hours". It can also be triggered by a long single day, or by working outside the defined daily window ("spread of hours"), even if the weekly total looks modest. A different award frames these triggers differently — some count overtime daily, some weekly, some by roster cycle. That is exactly why the award has to be identified first.

Once the award is identified, its rate table applies. Again using MA000002 as an illustration — clause 21.4, Table 5, expressed as a percentage of the minimum hourly rate for employees other than shiftworkers:

When	Rate (full-time / part-time)
Monday to Saturday — first 2 hours	150%
Monday to Saturday — after 2 hours	200%
Sunday — all day	200%
Public holiday — all day	250%

These figures exist only because this award prescribes them. The Security Award, the General Retail Award, the Hospitality Award and hundreds of others each set their own numbers, their own thresholds and their own penalty structures. There is no transferable "Australian overtime rate" you can copy from one award to another.

If your award is not yet identified — or you are genuinely award- and agreement-free — you are not left with nothing. The certain, calculable claim remains: every hour you actually worked but were not paid for, valued at your ordinary hourly rate (a 1:1 ratio). Your ordinary rate is your real contractual wage, checked against the National Minimum Wage of $26.44 per hour from 1 July 2026 ([2026] FWCFB 3500). No multiplier is applied by default; instead, the likely award premium is flagged so you know to pursue it once the award is confirmed.

This is the same disciplined approach we take everywhere: never invent a rate. The unpaid-hours floor is certain; the multiplier waits for the award.

The order of operations, then, is always the same:

1. Identify the award or agreement covering your classification (industry + occupation).
2. Apply that award's triggers to work out which hours are overtime — weekly excess, daily excess, or outside the spread of hours.
3. Apply that award's rate table to those hours (its own 150%/200%/etc.).
4. Meanwhile, bank the certain floor — unpaid worked hours at your ordinary rate — which stands regardless.

Do you actually cross the overtime line in the first place? Our diagnostic, Am I Owed Overtime?, walks through the signs. And when the extra hours fall on a weekend or public holiday, the penalty-rates guide explains those loadings — which, like overtime, come from the award.