Pro Rata Salary Calculator

What this pro rata salary calculator does

A salary quoted “pro rata” is the full-time figure, not the amount you will actually be paid. A general pay calculator starts from the pay you already receive; this one starts from that full-time-equivalent figure, scales it to your hours or days, then runs the full tax calculation on the result: tax at the resident rates, the low income tax offset, the Medicare levy and its surcharge where it applies, and a HECS/HELP repayment if you have a study loan. What you read is an estimate of your real pro-rata pay and your real net pay, broken down by year, month, fortnight and week.

What pro rata means, and the formula behind it

Pro rata is Latin for “in proportion”. When a job ad says “$90,000 pro rata”, the $90,000 is the full-time-equivalent (FTE) salary: what the role would pay for a full year of full-time hours. Your actual pay is that figure multiplied by the share of the full-time role you work. A part-time employee on 60% of the full-time hours gets 60% of the full-time pay, and the same proportion flows through to leave entitlements and most other conditions.

The full-time week defaults to 38 hours, the maximum ordinary hours for a full-time employee under the National Employment Standards in the Fair Work Act 2009. Some modern awards and enterprise agreements set a shorter full-time week, so you can adjust the 38 to whatever your contract uses; your pro-rata fraction is always worked out against your own full-time week, never a silent assumption. If you think in days rather than hours, a standard day is one fifth of the full-time week (7.6 hours on a 38-hour week), so 3 days a week is a 60% fraction and 19 hours a week is exactly half.

How to calculate pro rata salary

1. Find your fraction. Divide your weekly hours by the full-time weekly hours for the role. Working 25 hours against a 38-hour week gives a fraction of 0.658, or about 66% of full time.
2. Apply it to the full-time figure. Multiply the FTE figure by the fraction. On an $80,000 full-time salary: $80,000 × (25 ÷ 38) = $52,632 a year before tax. For a part-year role, multiply again by the weeks you work divided by 52.
3. Then run the tax on the smaller figure. Tax is worked out on your actual pro-rata income, not the full-time figure, and because the tax-free threshold and the lower tax brackets apply in full, your net pay is a bigger share of the full-time net than your hours are of the full-time hours. The calculator above does this step for you; the worked example below shows why it matters.

Worked through in full: the $52,632 pro-rata figure above sits mostly in the 15% and 30% brackets for 2026-27. Tax before offsets is $6,310; the offset removes $211 of that, and Medicare adds $1,053, leaving take-home pay of about $45,480 a year, or $1,749 a fortnight. A straight 65.8% of the full-time take-home pay on $80,000 (about $42,030 of the full-time net of $63,880) would undersell it: the smaller figure keeps more than the hours share, every time.

Pro-rata pay by days per week

Standard 7.6-hour days against the standard full-time week of 38 hours, with FTE pay of $90,000, at 2026-27 rates with the tax-free threshold claimed and no HECS debt. Read the last column carefully: on every part-time row, the share of full-time net pay is higher than the share of full-time hours.

The same pattern holds on other salaries because it is built into the tax system, not the salary: common part-time scenarios on any FTE figure are 30 hours a week (79% of the full-time salary), 25 hours (66%) and 20 hours (53%). Your gross pay always scales exactly; it is the net figure that refuses to follow the proportion.

Why your take-home pay is not proportional to your hours

This is the part most pro-rata calculations skip, and it is the part worth money. Gross pay scales exactly with hours, but net pay does not, because three parts of the tax system apply in full no matter how few hours you work: the $18,200 tax-free threshold, the lower tax brackets your income passes through first, and the offset worth up to $700. A full-timer uses those on a large income; someone on fewer hours uses the same amounts on a smaller one, so they cover a larger share of it.

The numbers make it concrete. Working half the hours on a $100,000 FTE salary in 2026-27 pays exactly 50.0% of the full-time gross ($50,000), but about 56.4% of the full-time net: $43,730 against $77,480. Dropping from five days to three on $90,000 costs you 40% of your hours but only 34.4% of your take-home pay. Going the other way, moving from reduced hours to full-time adds less net than a straight multiplication suggests. The comparison panel in the calculator shows your own two percentages side by side for any figures you enter.

One more effect runs the same direction: the Medicare levy has a low-income shade-in, so pro-rata income under $28,011 pays no levy at all, and up to $35,013 only a reduced one. And if you hold a HECS/HELP debt, dropping hours can pull you under the $69,528 repayment threshold for 2026-27, switching the compulsory repayment off entirely; the toggle in the calculator shows the difference.

Part-year contracts and mid-year starts

Pro rata scales by time as well as by hours. A fixed-term arrangement or a mid-year start keeps the same annual salary, but it is paid only for the weeks you work: multiply by the weeks worked divided by 52. Working full-time on a $90,000 FTE salary for 26 weeks yields $45,000 gross, and the weeks field in the calculator models exactly that, on its own or combined with reduced hours.

Tax then works in your favour twice. It is assessed on your actual income for the financial year, $45,000 rather than $90,000, so a part-year worker pays a lower average tax rate than a full-year worker on the same weekly wage; on these figures the net is $40,405. But PAYG withholding during the year is worked out as if each pay continued for a full year, so the tax taken out usually overshoots, and the difference commonly comes back as a refund when you lodge your tax return. A study loan repayment is assessed the same way, on your full-year repayment income rather than the annualised rate, so a part-year salary can fall below the first repayment threshold even when the full-year rate would not.

Leave and super scale pro rata too

Your pay is not the only thing worked out in proportion. Annual leave: a part-time employee still receives four weeks of paid annual leave a year, but a week of that leave is a week of your shorter schedule: at 22.8 hours a week you accrue 91.2 hours of annual leave a year, not 152. Personal/carer's leave: the National Employment Standards give a full-time employee 10 days a year, and those on reduced hours get it pro rata, so 0.6 FTE accrues 6 days. Long service leave accrues in proportion in the same way under state and territory laws.

Superannuation scales with pay automatically, because the super guarantee is a percentage of your ordinary time earnings: the rate is 12% for 2026-27, paid by your employer on top of your pay, so earning 60% of the full-time salary builds 60% of the full-time super. It is never deducted from your take-home pay, which is why the calculator shows it separately as “employer super (on top)”. When you compare a reduced-hours offer against a full-time one, compare total packages: pay plus super, both scaled.

Pro rata vs casual: not the same thing

Pro-rata pay belongs to a permanent part-time role: the pay is scaled down, but the entitlements stay, in proportion: paid annual leave, paid personal leave, notice of termination and redundancy rights. Casual work works the opposite way. A casual employee gets a casual loading, 25% on top of the base hourly rate under the National Employment Standards and most modern awards, as compensation for not accruing those paid leave entitlements.

That is why a casual rate looks higher than the pro-rata rate for the same job: part of it is payment for leave you will never take. To compare a casual offer with a permanent part-time one honestly, set the casual rate against your pro-rata rate plus the value of four weeks of paid leave and 10 days of personal leave a year. The calculator above prices the permanent side of that comparison; divide your pro-rata pay by your annual hours to get the rate it works out to.

Pro rata salary on your payslip

In Australia, your payslip and your contract should both let you check the calculation. Look for three things. First, the FTE fraction or your agreed hours: payslips and agreements often quote the fraction (0.6, 0.8) rather than hours, and the two must agree: fraction × full-time hours = your weekly hours. Second, your hourly rate: a permanent part-time employee gets the same rate as a full-time employee doing the same job under the same award or agreement, so divide the full-time salary by the full-time annual hours (38 × 52 = 1,976 on a standard week) and check your rate matches: on $90,000 that is $45.55 an hour at any fraction. Third, the super line: 12% of your ordinary time earnings for the period, paid on top.

Converting between hours and FTE works both ways and is worth doing before any negotiation: hours ÷ full-time hours gives the FTE, and FTE × full-time hours gives the hours back. If you hold multiple jobs, each employer works out pro rata against that job's own full-time week, and your combined annual income is what the tax system, and any HECS/HELP repayment, is finally assessed on.

The rules behind the numbers

The framework is the Fair Work Act 2009 and the National Employment Standards (NES) inside it: the 38-hour maximum ordinary week for full-time employees, four weeks of annual leave, 10 days of personal/carer's leave, and the rule that part-time employees receive conditions in proportion to their hours. Most industries add a modern award on top, which can set its own full-time week, overtime and penalty rates, and an enterprise agreement can replace the award for a workplace. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the plain-English guidance employers and employees are expected to follow, and underpayment, even by accident, is the employer's problem to fix.

The tax side comes from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). These are the resident rates the calculator applies for 2026-27, excluding the Medicare levy:

On top of the table: the low income tax offset takes up to $700 off the tax of anyone earning up to $66,667 (it phases out in two steps from $37,500), and the levy adds 2% of taxable income once the low-income thresholds are passed. Keep the tax brackets, the offset and the levy separate in your head and every figure this calculator produces can be re-derived by hand, which is exactly what the “How your tax was calculated” panel above does with your numbers.

Sources and how the estimate works

Rates and rules are taken from the primary sources, checked on 3 November 2026:

• Australian Taxation Office: tax rates for Australian residents (2026-27 and 2025-26 tables)
• Australian Taxation Office: low income tax offset
• Australian Taxation Office: Medicare levy reduction for low-income earners
• Australian Taxation Office: study and training loan repayment thresholds and rates
• Fair Work Ombudsman: hours of work and the National Employment Standards

Methodology and limits. Your pro-rata salary is treated as your taxable income for the year, on the assumption that you are an Australian resident claiming the tax-free threshold, with no other income, deductions or offsets beyond the low income tax offset. One honest limitation: the ATO has not yet published the 2026-27 low-income Medicare levy thresholds, so this calculator uses the ATO's latest published thresholds (no levy at or below $28,011, shading in to the full 2% at $35,013), the same figures the ATO's own withholding formulas use from 1 July 2026. The Medicare levy surcharge is worked out on single thresholds; family thresholds are higher. A study loan repayment is worked out on your taxable income, while the ATO's repayment income also adds back items such as reportable super contributions and fringe benefits, so your assessed repayment can differ. Superannuation is estimated at the 12% guarantee rate on your pro-rata salary and shown on top, never deducted.

This calculator gives general information and estimates only; it is not tax, legal or financial advice. Check your own award or agreement, or a registered tax agent, before relying on a figure.

Last reviewed: 3 November 2026