Long service leave calculator 2026–27: every state and territory

Entitlements side by side

Two thresholds, two questions

Every Act works with a full entitlement, reached after seven or ten years, and a pro-rata threshold, reached after five or seven, and the calculator asks two questions in that order. Has the employee reached the full entitlement? If so, all accrued leave is paid on any termination, including resignation and dismissal for misconduct in most states. If not, has the employee reached the pro-rata threshold, and if so, does the reason for termination trigger payment in that state? Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory pay pro-rata leave whatever the reason, except serious misconduct in some. New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT pay it only when the employer ends the employment for a reason other than serious misconduct, or when the employee leaves because of illness, incapacity, or domestic or other pressing necessity. Below the pro-rata threshold nothing is payable anywhere.

Accrual rates

The accrual rate is the full entitlement divided by the years it takes to earn it: 0.8667 weeks per year where the entitlement is 8.67 weeks after ten years or 6.07 weeks after seven, and 1.3 weeks per year in South Australia and the Northern Territory, where thirteen weeks are earned in ten years. After the first entitlement, leave continues to accrue at the same rate, so a twenty-year employee in New South Wales has 17.33 weeks and one in Adelaide has 26. The calculator uses years and fractions of years; enter 12.5 for twelve years and six months.

What counts as continuous service

Long service leave rewards continuity, so the question that decides most claims is not how long you worked but whether the clock ever stopped. Across all the state and territory Acts the same broad pattern applies, with local variations in the detail:

• Paid leave counts. Annual leave, personal or carer’s leave and paid public holidays form part of continuous service and count towards the entitlement.
• Unpaid leave usually does not break service, but does not count towards it. Unpaid parental leave is the classic case: the employment continues, yet in most jurisdictions the period itself is not credited. Some Acts credit a limited number of weeks.
• A transfer of business preserves service. Where a business is sold or transmitted, service with the old employer normally carries over to the new one. This is the single most valuable and most overlooked rule, because employees frequently assume the clock restarted with the new entity on their payslip.
• Casual and part-time service counts. Irregular and casual engagements count in most jurisdictions provided the employment was continuous; changes in hours affect the rate at which the leave is paid, not whether it accrued.
• Short breaks are tolerated. A dismissal followed by re-engagement within a short window, a stand-down, or an absence due to injury generally does not break continuity, although the gap itself may not be counted.

Pro-rata payment on termination

The second threshold — the point at which leave is paid out on leaving without having reached the full entitlement — is where the states diverge most sharply, and it is worth checking before resigning. In several jurisdictions a pro-rata payment is available after seven years for any reason of termination. In others it becomes available after five years, but only where the employee is dismissed, made redundant, or resigns for illness, incapacity or a pressing domestic necessity, and not where they simply resign for a better job. Resigning one month before a threshold can therefore cost several weeks of pay. Where a pro-rata payment is owed, it is calculated on the ordinary rate at the date of termination, which means a recent promotion or pay rise applies to the whole accrued entitlement, not only to the period since the increase.

Which state’s law applies

The state or territory in which the employee is based, not where the employer is headquartered, usually determines the Act. For employees who work across borders, the Acts look at where the employee was engaged and where the work was substantially performed. Federal awards made before 2010 that contained long service leave clauses continue to apply to some employees as preserved terms, and enterprise agreements can provide more generous terms but cannot provide less than the Act. Employees in portable industry schemes, such as building and construction, claim from the scheme rather than the employer. Choose the state where you work and, in a doubtful case, compare the results for both.