Every modern award minimum rate rises 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026 — separate from the 6% national minimum wage increase. Award-reliant workers, about 23% of employees according to the ABS (May 2025), get the rise automatically, spanning retail, hospitality, aged care and beyond.
Key facts
| What changed | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Modern award minimum rates | — | +4.75% |
| Award-reliant employees affected | — | ~23% of employees (ABS, May 2025) |
| Takes effect | — | First full pay period on or after 1 July 2026 |
| Awards covered | — | Hospitality, Retail, Fast Food, Restaurant, Aged Care and all other modern awards |
Which awards are covered
The 4.75% increase applies uniformly across every modern award, so it reaches the industries with the highest share of award-reliant workers: the Hospitality Award, Retail Award, Fast Food Industry Award and Restaurant Industry Award all lift by the same percentage, as does the Aged Care Award and the awards covering cleaning, security and support services. If your pay is set by an award rather than an enterprise agreement or an individual arrangement above the award, the rise applies to you automatically — no request needed.
How it differs from the minimum wage rise
It's easy to conflate the two figures from this year's Annual Wage Review, but they apply to different groups. The national minimum wage — the fallback rate for employees not covered by an award or agreement — rose 6% to $26.44 an hour. Modern award minimum rates, which set pay for classified roles across specific industries, rose a separate 4.75%. Most award base rates already sit above the national minimum wage, so the percentage increases don't translate to the same dollar amounts. Check our award rates guide to see current rates by classification.
The Fair Work Commission handed down both figures in the same Annual Wage Review 2026 decision, announced on 2 June 2026, but treated them as two separate questions: what the safety-net minimum wage should be for workers with no award coverage, and what modern award rates should be for the employees whose pay is set by a classification structure. The Commission can and does move these figures by different percentages in the same review, as it has this year.
Working out your new rate
Take your current award base rate for your classification and multiply by 1.0475 to get the new rate from 1 July 2026. Junior, apprentice and trainee rates, which are set as a percentage of the adult rate, move by the same 4.75% since they're calculated off the new base. Casual loadings and penalty rates then apply on top of the increased base rate, so overtime and weekend shifts also pay more in dollar terms even though the percentage loading itself hasn't changed.
Employers are required to apply the new rates from the first full pay period after 1 July 2026, not from 1 July itself, so check your payslip against your award's updated pay guide rather than assuming the increase lands automatically on the calendar date — our guide to understanding your payslip explains what each line should show. Fair Work Ombudsman publishes an updated pay guide for each award once the new rates are set, listing base, casual, and penalty rates by classification level.
Aged care and other high award-reliance sectors
Aged care, along with cleaning, security and other support-service awards, has a higher than average share of award-reliant staff, so the 4.75% increase reaches a large proportion of the workforce in those sectors directly rather than through enterprise bargaining. Employers in these industries typically see the wage increase flow through payroll systems automatically once the updated award schedules are published, but it's still worth confirming your classification level hasn't changed since your last pay review.
What this means for your pay
If your award classification pays, say, $28 an hour today, expect roughly $29.33 an hour from your first full July pay period — before any penalty rates or loadings. Overtime, weekend and public holiday loadings then compound on the higher base, so shift workers see a bigger dollar increase than their base rate alone suggests. Run your new hourly rate through our overtime pay calculator to see what a typical week with penalty shifts adds up to under the new rates.