Long service leave in Victoria (2026–27): 6.07 weeks after 7 years

Accrued weeks and payout on $1,500/week

The only Act where the entitlement vests at seven years for everyone

Victoria rewrote its long service leave law in 2018 and produced the most employee-favourable regime in the country on the point that matters most: the Long Service Leave Act 2018 (Vic) vests the entitlement at 7 years and makes the accrued balance payable on termination for any reason at all. No test of who ended the job, no category of acceptable resignation, no distinction between redundancy and a move to a competitor. At 7 years a Victorian employee has 6.07 weeks of paid leave that belongs to them. Three years earlier than the 10-year vesting of most other states, and without the conditions New South Wales attaches to its earlier pro-rata. It is the single reason the state column matters so much on a final pay calculation.

The two payout columns are identical from 7 years onwards, which is unique to Victoria and the ACT among the eight jurisdictions. Everywhere else the resignation column lags behind the redundancy column, sometimes by years. Below 7 years both are empty: the 2018 Act gives no pro-rata at all before vesting, so the threshold is a genuine cliff rather than a slope.

Termination under the 2018 Act

Entitlement vests at 7 years; on termination after 7 years the full accrued amount is paid whatever the reason. The corollary is worth stating plainly: below 7 years a Victorian employee gets nothing on termination whatever the reason, including redundancy — the position a New South Wales employee would not be in from 5 years. Victoria is more generous after the threshold and stricter before it. For an employee at six years and nine months facing a restructure, the three months to the anniversary are worth 6.07 weeks of pay, and that is a conversation worth having with the employer while the timing of the redundancy is still open.

Leave in periods of a single day

The 2018 Act also changed how the leave is used. A Victorian employee can take long service leave in periods as short as one day, by agreement with the employer, where the older Acts contemplated blocks of weeks. Combined with the right to take leave at half pay for double the time or, by agreement, double pay for half the time, this makes Victorian long service leave usable as flexible time rather than a single long absence. Parental leave counts as service in Victoria — paid or unpaid, without the twelve-month cap that applies in several other states — which for an employee who has taken two periods of parental leave can be the difference between reaching 7 years and not.

CoINVEST and the Victorian portable schemes

Victoria has gone further than any other state in extending portable long service leave beyond construction. CoINVEST has covered the building and construction industry for decades, funded by an employer levy and following the worker between employers. The Portable Long Service Benefits Authority, created in 2018, added contract cleaning, security and the community services sector — three industries where employment is fragmented across short engagements and almost nobody would otherwise reach 7 years. Workers covered by a scheme accrue with the scheme rather than the employer, register once, and claim from the Authority rather than from the final pay.

The Wage Inspectorate and Victorian enforcement

Wage Inspectorate Victoria administers the Long Service Leave Act 2018 (Vic) and can investigate unpaid long service leave, issue compliance notices and prosecute. Victoria is the jurisdiction where non-payment is treated most firmly: the 2018 Act made it an offence rather than merely a civil debt, and prosecutions have followed. An employee who is not paid accrued leave in a final pay can complain to the Inspectorate at no cost, or bring a claim in the Magistrates' Court. Employers must keep long service leave records for the whole of the employment and for seven years afterwards.

The rules common to all eight jurisdictions — what counts as continuous service, the rate of pay the leave is paid at, and how leave is taken while employed — are set out in the long service leave guide. The final pay calculator adds the result to redundancy, notice and annual leave.