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National Employment Standards

Sick leave calculator

Two weeks of your ordinary hours a year, building from your first day and carried over — counted in hours, not days.

Fair Work rules · verified

Entitlements verified against the official sources — how we check.

Ordinary hours only, not overtime. If they vary, use your average week.

In hours, as your payslip shows it: three 7.6-hour days is 22.8.

Only changes how the answer reads in days. The hours are the entitlement.

Unpaid leave pauses the build-up. Paid leave, annual and long service leave included, does not.

Sick and carer’s leave balance

129.2 hours

That is 17 days of 7.6 hours: 152 hours built up, less 22.8 taken.

Left to use 129.2 hrsAlready taken 22.8 hrs

It builds up by

Week
1.46 hrs
Fortnight
2.92 hrs
Month
6.33 hrs
Year
76 hrs

How it’s made up

Two weeks of your hours, a year76 hrs (10 days)
Built up over your service152 hrs
Less leave already taken−22.8 hrs
Balance129.2 hrs

The build-up is spread evenly across your service. Payroll counts the ordinary hours you actually worked, so the two agree on steady hours and drift if yours changed.

Your balance from here

Enter your details above to see this.

An estimate of your National Employment Standards entitlement. An award, agreement or contract can give more, never less, and your payslip is the authoritative record. General information only — not employment advice.

Sick leave and carer’s leave are one balance, which Fair Work also calls personal/carer’s leave. The calculator works it out from your ordinary hours and your time in the job; the annual leave calculator does the same for holidays, at four weeks a year instead of two. If you work part time, the pro rata salary calculator shows both beside your pay.

Ten days means hours, not days

In 2020 the High Court decided, in Mondelez v AMWU, that the ten days are counted in hours of work. Fair Work states the rule as a fraction: one twenty-sixth of your ordinary hours in a year. How many days that makes depends on how long your days are.

Fair Work's examples of a year of paid sick and carer's leave, in hours and in each employee's own days
ExampleLeave a yearIn their days
Suzanne 38 hours over 5 days76 hours10 days of 7.6 hours
Rebecca 19 hours over 2.5 days38 hours5 days of 7.6 hours
Jango 38 hours over 4 days76 hours8 days of 9.5 hours
Len 36 hours over 5 days72 hours10 days of 7.2 hours
Joss 36 hours over 3 days72 hours6 days of 12 hours

Suzanne, Rebecca and Jango are on Fair Work’s sick and carer’s leave page; Len and Joss are in its Library. Rebecca averages 19 hours over a five-day fortnight, which is two and a half days a week.

Joss and Len both work 36 hours, so both get 72 hours. Taken in whole days, that is ten of Len’s 7.2-hour days and six of Joss’s 12-hour ones. That is why this calculator asks for your hours first and keeps your days in the details: the days are a way of reading the answer, not part of it.

How it builds up, and what pauses it

It builds gradually from your first day of work, and whatever is left at the end of each year carries over. You can use it as it builds, with no minimum or maximum taken at a time. It keeps building through paid absences and stops during unpaid ones.

Absences during which sick and carer's leave does and does not keep building
Keeps building duringStops during
paid annual leaveunpaid annual leave
paid sick and carer's leaveunpaid sick or carer's leave
community service leave including jury dutyunpaid parental leave
long service leaveunpaid family and domestic violence leave

Where an award or agreement allows leave at half pay, sick and carer's leave keeps accruing as if the leave were at full pay: it is not unpaid leave. For a part-time employee on irregular hours who is not covered by an award or agreement, Fair Work works out ordinary hours as the hours worked in the last 4 weeks divided by 4 (or by the completed weeks, if fewer than 4).

What a day of it pays

Sick and carer's leave is paid at the employee's base pay rate for the ordinary hours they would have worked during the leave. The base rate leaves out incentive-based payments and bonuses, loadings, allowances, overtime, penalty rates. So a sick day on a shift that would have carried penalty rates pays less than working it would have, and that gap is not a payroll error.

Carer’s leave comes out of the same hours

Sick leave is for when you cannot work because of your own illness or injury, which Fair Work says can include stress and pregnancy-related illness. Carer’s leave is for caring for or supporting a member of your immediate family or household who is sick, injured or has an unexpected emergency. Both draw on the balance above.

When the paid hours are gone, full-time and part-time employees can take 2 days of unpaid carer’s leave on each occasion. Casuals have no paid balance, but the 2 unpaid days apply to them too.

Cashing it out, and leaving the job

Most awards do not let sick and carer’s leave be cashed out. A registered agreement can, and two awards do: the Timber Award and the Stevedoring Award. Even then each cash-out needs its own written agreement, must leave at least 15 days of the balance in place, and must pay at least what taking the leave would have.

When the job ends, the balance ends with it. As Fair Work puts it: “Sick and carer's leave isn't paid out when employment ends.” That is the sharpest difference from annual leave, every unused hour of which has to be paid out.

Frequently asked questions

How many days of sick leave do you get a year?
Ten days if you work full time, and the same share of your own hours if you work part time. Strictly it is a number of hours, one twenty-sixth of your ordinary hours in a year: on a 38-hour week that is 76 hours. Someone working three 7.6-hour days a week gets 45.6 hours, which is 6 of their days.
How much sick leave do I get on a 40-hour week?
If 40 hours a week are your ordinary hours, 80 hours a year, which is ten 8-hour days. Only ordinary hours count. If your ordinary week is 38 hours and the other two are overtime, it is 76.
How much sick leave do I accrue each week or fortnight?
One twenty-sixth of the ordinary hours you work. On 38 hours a week that is about 1.46 hours a week, 2.92 a fortnight or 6.33 a month, starting from your first day rather than arriving in a lump on your anniversary.
Does sick leave roll over to the next year?
Yes. Whatever is left at the end of each year carries over to the next, so a balance can grow well past one year’s entitlement if you are rarely ill. Using it takes off the ordinary hours you would have worked: a 7.6-hour day off removes 7.6 hours, and a 12-hour shift removes 12.
Do I need a medical certificate for one day off sick?
Your employer can ask for evidence for as little as one day, or even part of a day. A medical certificate or a statutory declaration are the usual examples, and the test is whether it would convince a reasonable person. Your award or agreement may spell out what it wants. Tell your employer as soon as you can, which is allowed to be after the leave has started.
Is carer’s leave paid?
Yes, for full-time and part-time employees, because it comes out of the same paid balance as your sick leave rather than a separate one. A week at home with a sick child on a 38-hour week uses 38 hours of it. Once that balance runs out, you can still take two days of unpaid carer’s leave each time someone needs you.
Do casual employees get sick leave?
Not paid sick leave: casuals are the one group of employees outside the entitlement. A casual can still take two days of unpaid carer’s leave each time a member of their immediate family or household is sick, injured or has an unexpected emergency.
Is unused sick leave paid out when I resign?
No. Unlike annual leave, which has to be paid out, the National Employment Standards let a sick and carer’s leave balance lapse with the job, however it ends. If your contract or agreement does pay it out, the ATO taxes that payment as an employment termination payment, which the redundancy calculator covers.

Where these rules come from

The entitlement, how it builds and the rules for taking it are read from a dated file that cites Fair Work for each one, and the engine is pinned by automated tests to all five of Fair Work’s examples in the table above.

Awards and enterprise agreements sit on top of the National Employment Standards and can only give more. We do not model awards, and the methodology page sets out what every calculator here models and what it does not.