Notice Period Calculator

The first band never gets the over-45 week, because it needs at least 2 years of service and the band stops at 1. In the second band the extra week only lands once you reach 2 years: someone over 45 with 18 months gets 2 weeks, and with 2 years gets 3.

The notice period starts the day after your employer tells you the job is ending and runs to your last day. Your employer has to put it in writing, confirming the last day, and can deliver it in person, leave it at your last known address, post it there, or send it electronically if you agree and can easily access it.

Continuous service is the time you have been employed by that employer. It includes unpaid leave such as unpaid parental leave and excludes unauthorised absence. Fair Work's own example: Joan, 35, has 5 years and 3 months of service including 12 months of unpaid parental leave, so she is owed 4 weeks.

An award, enterprise agreement or contract can set a longer period. A contract can never give less than the NES or your award. For award-specific figures, use Fair Work's Notice and Redundancy Calculator.

Add the weeks of notice, times 7, to the date notice is given. The count starts the next day, so whole weeks always end on the same weekday the notice was given. Notice given on Tuesday 6 October 2026 with 4 weeks runs 28 calendar days and ends on Tuesday 3 November 2026. Enter a date in the calculator above to get yours.

Public holidays and leave inside the period do not move the date. Fair Work puts it plainly: leave and public holidays that fall during a notice period do not extend the notice period. If your employer pays out the notice instead, employment ends on the day notice is given and the pay in lieu covers the weeks you would have worked.

A contract that sets notice in days (30 days is common) is counted the same way: calendar days from the day after notice is given. Thursday 1 October 2026 plus 30 days is Saturday 31 October 2026.

Your award, enterprise agreement or contract sets it, not the NES table above. That table binds the employer. So the honest answer for a resignation is the number in your own instrument, and this calculator does not guess it.

• Award or agreement covered: look up your award through Find my award or run it through the Notice and Redundancy Calculator, which covers notice given by the employee as well as the employer.
• Casual: no notice required. Telling your employer your last day is still best practice.
• Award and agreement free: no notice unless your contract requires it. If the contract is silent or there is no written contract, you may need to give reasonable notice.

Short notice has a price. Most awards let the employer deduct up to one week's wages if you are 18 or over, have not given the notice the award requires, and the deduction is not unreasonable. The deduction can only come from wages owed under the award. Your leave and any over-award payments are off limits.

Resignation notice can be verbal or written, though writing it down with your last day is best practice. Your employer cannot refuse to accept a resignation.

Everything you would have been paid had you worked the notice out. Base pay alone is not enough. Fair Work lists what goes in:

• incentive-based payments and bonuses
• loadings
• monetary allowances
• overtime
• penalty rates
• any other separately identifiable amounts.

Your employer can have you work the full period, pay it all out, or do a mix of both. Where it is paid out, the employment ends on your last working day and leave stops accruing from then. The payment has to be made before or on the day your employment ends, which is tighter than the 7 days most awards allow for the rest of the final pay.

This page gives the gross figure only. The ATO lists payment in lieu of notice as an employment termination payment, so tax it with the redundancy payout calculator. Unused annual leave in the same final pay runs under its own schedule on the annual leave payout calculator.

Yes, and they do not extend it. A public holiday inside your notice period counts as part of the period. The same rule covers leave: annual leave taken during notice (only with your employer's agreement) and sick or carer's leave both fall inside the period rather than pushing the last day out.

Your employer cannot force you to take annual leave as part of the notice period. Any time you actually work during notice keeps accruing leave.

The NES notice rules do not apply to employees who:

• are casual
• are employed for a specific period of time, season or task
• are dismissed for serious misconduct
• have a training arrangement and are employed for a set period or the length of the arrangement (other than an apprentice)
• are daily hire in building and construction, or in the meat industry in connection with the slaughter of livestock
• are weekly hire in the meat industry and whose employment ends only because of seasonal factors.

Serious misconduct means conduct such as theft, fraud, assault, sexual harassment, being intoxicated at work or refusing a lawful and reasonable instruction. Even then, the employer still pays time worked, unused annual leave and, in some cases, long service leave. An apprentice does get notice unless employed for a set period or dismissed for serious misconduct.

A full-time warehouse supervisor, aged 48, is made redundant after 4 years and 3 months. Base pay is $1,700 a week and a regular weekend shift adds $150 a week in penalty rates. The employer wants the supervisor gone the same day.

Paying base rate only would give $6,800, which is $600 short, because the penalty rates would have been earned had the supervisor worked the notice. Under 45, the same service gives 3 weeks and $5,550. Redundancy pay under the NES is a separate entitlement on top of this, worked out at base rate and only where the employer has 15 or more employees.