Long Service Leave QLD: Entitlements, 7 Years, Pay & Calculator

What Is Long Service Leave in Queensland?

Long service leave is additional paid leave that rewards an employee for a long, unbroken period of work with one employer. It exists because annual leave and personal leave are designed for short breaks, and governments decided that a decade or more of service deserved a proper extended rest that is not eaten into your other entitlements. In Queensland the general scheme is set by Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld), with the practical detail published by Business Queensland and enforced through the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission and the Industrial Magistrates Court.

The qualifying test is continuous service, not full-time service. That means full-time employees, regular part-time employees and casual employees are all inside the scheme, and an employee is covered even where the contract is intermittent. Long service leave is a statutory minimum: if an award, enterprise agreement, certified agreement or workplace policy gives you better terms — more weeks, an earlier trigger, or the right to cash out — that instrument applies instead of the minimum.

Queensland long service leave is also not part of the national Fair Work safety net. Long service leave is left to the states and territories, so the rules that apply to you depend on where your employment is located, and the Queensland system remains the fallback where a federal instrument is silent.

When Do You Get Long Service Leave in QLD?

The single most common misunderstanding about Queensland long service leave is that the thresholds are steps on the same ladder. They are not. There are three different curves running through the scheme: what you have earned, what you can take, and what you can be paid when the job ends.

Earned Versus Accessible: The Two Curves

Accrual is measured at 0.86667 weeks for every year of continuous service once you pass 7 years — which is simply the 8.6667-week entitlement spread across the 10-year qualifying period. Access is what you can actually take today, and it is switched on in blocks. The table below is generated by our calculator engine using the statutory rules.

Look at the 12-year row. The employee has earned 10.4 weeks but can only take 8.6667. That gap of 1.7333 weeks is not lost — it is released the moment the employee completes 15 years, or it is paid out in full if the employment ends first.

Long Service Leave QLD After 7 Years

Reaching 7 years in Queensland does not entitle you to take about six weeks of paid leave. What you get is a conditional right to a proportionate payment, and it only crystallises if the primary reason your employment ends falls inside one of the statutory grounds. Business Queensland lists them as follows:

• your service ends because of your death;
• you end your own employment because of your illness (which includes injury, incapacity or another medical condition), or because of a domestic or other pressing necessity;
• your employer dismisses you because of your illness;
• your employer dismisses you for a reason other than your conduct, capacity or performance — this is the category that covers redundancy; or
• your employer unfairly dismisses you.

The calculator below describes each of these grounds in everyday language so you can see how your own situation maps onto the statutory list. The important point is that leaving voluntarily to take another job is not a qualifying reason, and neither is being dismissed for genuine conduct, capacity or performance problems.

Pro Rata Long Service Leave QLD

Pro rata means proportionate. Queensland builds the proportionate amount from the same 8.6667-week entitlement that a 10-year employee receives, divided by the 10 qualifying years, giving 0.86667 weeks per year of continuous service. So:

• 7 completed years produces about 6.0667 weeks;
• 8 completed years produces about 6.9334 weeks;
• 9 completed years produces about 7.8 weeks.

Exact duration matters, which is why Business Queensland publishes the accrual in small increments rather than rounding to whole years. The rates below come straight from the official calculating guidance, and our engine reaches the same figures from a single continuous formula rather than four separate rates:

Because the per-month, per-week and per-day rates are just 0.86667 divided down, an employee at 7 years and 5 months is not treated the same as one at exactly 7 years — the extra five months adds about 0.361 weeks. Any long service leave already taken and paid for is then subtracted from the result.

The official example on the Queensland Government page is an employee with 18 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and 2 days of continuous service, built up as 13.0000 weeks for the first 15 years, plus 2.8167 weeks for 3 years 3 months, plus 0.0381 weeks for 2 weeks 2 days, giving 15.8548 weeks. Our engine produces 15.8546 weeks for the same service — the small difference is Queensland rounding each line of its table to four decimals before adding them up.

How Much Long Service Leave Do You Get in QLD?

Here is the full entitlement picture, including the Queensland Government examples at 12 years and at 17 years 3 months:

Every one of those figures is before deducting long service leave you have already taken and been paid for. If you took five weeks at year 12, your balance at year 20 is 17.3333 minus five, not 17.3333.

Long Service Leave QLD Calculator

The calculator below applies both curves. Choose whether you are still employed and working out what you can take, or whether employment is ending and you want the payment figure. Full-time employees work from an ordinary weekly wage; casuals and regular part-timers work from total ordinary hours, because that is what the statute requires. If you prefer a standalone tool, our Queensland long service leave calculator lives on its own page.

How to Calculate Long Service Leave in QLD

Full-time employees

Establish the period of continuous service, count the completed years, then apply the 0.86667 weeks per year accrual and the access blocks at 10 and 15 years. Value the weeks at your ordinary weekly rate of hire at the time the leave is taken.

Casual and regular part-time employees

Queensland uses a different method, and this is where most DIY calculators go wrong. The statutory formula is:

total ordinary hours worked ÷ 52 × 8.6667 ÷ 10 = hours of long service leave

The official examples are the clearest way to see it. A casual who worked 9,600 ordinary hours across 8 years of continuous service gets 160.0006 hours; one who worked 15,600 hours across 10 years gets 260.001 hours; and one who worked 18,720 hours across 13 years gets 312.0012 hours. Note that the number of ordinary hours — not the formula — is what changes with the length of service. Where the employer and the casual or part-time employee agree, the entitlement can instead be taken as a full-time equivalent, so the 260.001 hours earned on 15,600 ordinary hours becomes 6.8421 weeks measured against a standard 38-hour Queensland week.

Mixed employment status

If you moved between full-time, casual and regular part-time work during one continuous period of employment, the total ordinary hours used in the calculation include your hours from every phase — including the full-time periods. Practically, that means an employee who worked five years full-time and five years casual on the same engagement is measured on the combined ordinary hours across the whole decade.

Why a simple multiplier is not good enough

A calculator that just multiplies years by 0.86667 and multiplies by a salary will be wrong for most casuals, will overstate what a 12-year employee can take, and will ignore the reason a job ended. Our engine handles the hours formula, the access blocks and the statutory grounds separately, which is why it asks more questions than a typical calculator.

Long Service Leave Pay Rate

Long service leave is paid at the current ordinary rate of hire for the period of leave, excluding overtime. If you are being paid above the applicable award or agreement rate, the leave must be paid at that higher rate — the statutory minimum is a floor, not a cap. Three points people most often get wrong:

• No leave loading. Unlike annual leave, Queensland is explicit that no leave loading is payable on long service leave.
• Casuals are paid their loaded rate. The casual hourly rate including casual loading is the correct basis, because that is the casual’s ordinary rate of hire.
• Commission earners get an averaged figure. Under section 99 of the Act, commissions are worked out as the total payable in the year before leave divided by 52.179, multiplied by the number of weeks being paid.

Questions about tax withheld from a long service leave payment, or superannuation on it, go to the Australian Taxation Office rather than Queensland industrial regulators — Business Queensland directs them to 13 28 66 for tax and 13 10 20 for superannuation. A payout and a period of paid leave are taxed differently, so it is worth modelling the difference before you negotiate; our annual leave payout calculator shows how leave payouts are taxed at 17 per cent on the unused-leave component.

Taking Long Service Leave

Timing is meant to be agreed. Section 97 of the Act provides that the employee and employer may agree when the leave is taken, and Business Queensland confirms that where an agreement exists the leave can be taken for any duration the parties agree — there is no statutory minimum block when both sides consent.

Where no agreement can be reached, the employer may decide when the leave is taken, but must give at least 3 months written notice and can only require at least 4 weeks. The QIRC can also insert provisions into an industrial instrument about when and how long service leave is taken, so your agreement may set its own notice period. Payment becomes payable at a time the parties agree, or if they cannot agree, at a time decided by the commission.

Public Holidays and Ongoing Accrual

Long service leave is exclusive of public holidays. Under section 95(5), a public holiday that falls during the period of the leave is not counted as leave, and Business Queensland spells out the practical effect: any public holiday falling on a day you would ordinarily have worked must be added to the leave. Take eight weeks of long service leave across a stretch containing two public holidays on normal working days and you are away for eight weeks plus those two days, while still only being debited eight weeks of entitlement.

Accrual also continues while you are off. Queensland guidance is explicit that long service leave keeps accruing while an employee is on paid sick or carer’s leave, paid annual leave, and while already on paid long service leave. Unpaid leave is the opposite: it usually does not break continuity of service, but it is not service, so nothing accrues and your anniversary date shifts out by the length of the unpaid period. For the related question of what happens to leave when you are off work injured, see our Queensland WorkCover calculator and note that periods of WorkCover absence may count as continuous service.

Long Service Leave When You Leave Your Job

This is the scenario that generates most Queensland long service leave disputes, so the three bands are worth memorising:

• Under 7 years: no proportionate payment is available under the general scheme, whatever the reason for leaving.
• 7 to under 10 years: a proportionate payment is available only where the primary reason for the ending of service is one of the 6 statutory grounds. Retirement, resignation to start a new job, and dismissal for genuine conduct or performance problems are not among them.
• 10 years or more: the entitlement is automatic and not subject to those criteria. The payment is measured on your whole period of continuous service — which is why a 12-year employee receives 10.4 weeks rather than the 8.6667 weeks they could take while employed.

Where an employee dies, any amount unpaid is paid to their legal personal representative. Where the employer transfers the business, see transferring long service leave below — a transfer is not a termination, and the balance follows the employee rather than being paid out.

Cashing Out Long Service Leave in QLD

Queensland deliberately makes cashing out hard, because the policy behind the leave is that people should actually take the break. Section 110 of the Act allows payment instead of taking leave in only two situations:

1. an industrial instrument (award, enterprise agreement or certified agreement, or a federal instrument) provides for the payment, and the employee and employer sign an agreement, and the payment is made in accordance with that instrument; or
2. the QIRC orders the payment on the employee’s own application, and it may only do so on compassionate grounds or the ground of financial hardship.

The QIRC route uses Form 13 — Application for payment instead of taking long service leave — and the Full Bench is prohibited from making a general ruling that allows cash-outs. In practice, applications are decided by Members on the papers without a hearing, cost nothing to lodge, and the QIRC long service leave guide suggests a valid, undisputed application can take around four weeks until funds are available. Grounds that commonly succeed include overdue bills, credit card debt, mortgage or loan arrears, rent in arrears or pending eviction, funeral costs, medical or surgical costs, separation or divorce, and other unforeseen circumstances. An approved payout reduces your long service leave balance by the amount paid, at your ordinary rate of pay.

Do not confuse a cash-out with a termination payment. When employment ends, payment of the accrued or proportionate balance is an entitlement — it is not a cash-out and none of these conditions apply.

Who Pays Long Service Leave in Queensland?

Under the general scheme, your employer pays. There is no state fund for ordinary Queensland employees, which is why time and wages records matter so much: an employer must keep a record of the total ordinary hours worked by each casual employee, worked out to and including 30 June each year, and keep it for six years after employment ends.

If you work in one of the three portable industries, QLeave may pay instead. Do not assume that — QLeave only pays where you are a registered worker, your employer has actually reported your service, and you lodge a claim, and it does not replace the employer obligation where you reach an employer-based entitlement first.

If your employer will not pay, the escalation path is: your own records and a written request; then the long service leave claim form to the Office of Industrial Relations, which can investigate breaches of the long service leave provisions; then the QIRC wage recovery and long service leave list, using Form 14 for a proportionate payment or Form 15 to recover unpaid amounts, with contested matters heard in the Industrial Magistrates Court. The Industrial Relations Infoline on (07) 3406 9999 is the starting point for general enquiries, and QLeave itself is on 1300 753 283. QIRC forms are listed centrally.

Portable Long Service Leave QLD and QLeave

The general scheme is tied to a single employer, which fails workers in industries where changing contractors is normal. Queensland therefore runs three portable long service leave schemes through QLeave, covering building and construction, contract cleaning and community services. Employers in those industries are legally required to register, report service for eligible workers and pay a levy. The service is recorded against you, not your employer, so it survives every job change inside the industry — and recognised service recorded in another participating state can count towards a Queensland total.

The three schemes are genuinely different, and treating them as one is a common and costly mistake:

Building and construction

A worker is credited with a year of service for every 220 days, capped at 220 days per financial year, so 2,200 credits equals 10 years and unlocks 8.67 weeks. Additional leave then accrues for each further day recorded. If you leave the industry, a proportionate claim generally needs at least 1,540 credits, or 7 years registered plus 1,155 credits. Claims are for a minimum of five days unless it is your final claim, and from 1 July 2026 a weekly cap of $2,548 applies to claims paid by QLeave.

Contract cleaning

Employers register within 7 days of becoming a contract cleaning employer and lodge quarterly wage returns. The full entitlement sits at 3,650 recorded days — 10 years — for 8.67 weeks, with a proportionate payment available from 2,555 days if you are permanently leaving the industry. From 1 July 2026 the levy falls from 0.75 per cent to 0.5 per cent of ordinary wages.

Community services

The newest scheme, established January 2021, and the most different: the qualifying point is 2,555 days — seven years — for 6.1 weeks, repeating every further 2,555 days, funded by a 1.35 per cent levy on ordinary wages. Because the scheme only began in 2021, the earliest that recorded service reaches seven years is January 2028. Workers cannot be paid twice for the same period, and employer reimbursement claims only cover service recorded from 1 January 2021.

General QLD Long Service Leave Versus Portable Long Service Leave

Transferring Long Service Leave to a New Employer

Where a business or calling is transferred and you keep working for the new owner, section 132 of the Act deems the transfer not to break your continuity, and service with the former employer counts as service with the new one. Business Queensland puts it plainly: a transferred employee is entitled to all long service leave accumulated for the total period of employment, including leave built up with the previous employer, and describes the provision as not negotiable.

The protection extends to the awkward window around a sale: an employee dismissed at the time the business changes hands, or in the month beforehand, and then employed by the new owner within three months, still carries their service across. Continuity is also preserved where an employer re-employs a worker within three months of a termination, and service with a corporation and its subsidiaries is treated as service with the same employer. There is one limit: you cannot claim the benefit of the same period of service twice, so an employer who pays out the balance at a transfer must not pay it again later. Separately, section 927 makes it unlawful to dismiss a worker, or to interrupt a casual’s continuity, in order to avoid a long service leave obligation.

None of this means changing jobs carries your leave with you. Voluntary movement to an unrelated employer generally restarts the Queensland clock — which is exactly the problem portable schemes exist to solve.

Casual and Part-Time Long Service Leave in QLD

Casual employees have qualified in Queensland since 30 March 1994, and all of a casual’s continuous service counts. Two features distinguish casuals from salaried employees. First, the hours-based formula described above, which rewards actual ordinary hours rather than calendar tenure. Second, fragility of continuity: a casual’s continuous service may end if the gap between engagements exceeds 3 months between the end of one engagement and the start of the next. A long stretch without shifts is therefore not neutral — it can reset a decade of accrual, so check your longest gaps before trusting any estimate.

Regular part-time employees use the same hours formula and the same qualifying periods. The Queensland Government recommends keeping the same total-ordinary-hours records for part-timers that employers must keep for casuals, because part-time hours frequently change over a ten-year period. Where hours changed mid-way, the correct approach is to add up the actual ordinary hours across the whole continuous period rather than applying today’s pattern retrospectively. Payment for a casual is made at the loaded casual hourly rate, and where both sides agree the hours can be taken as a full-time equivalent period.

Queensland Public Sector Employees

If you work for a Queensland government entity, do not use the figures above. Long Service Leave (Directive 10/24), issued under Public Sector Act 2022 (Qld) s 223 and effective 30 September 2024, prescribes long service leave for public service employees and employees of a list of statutory bodies including Queensland Health, the Hospital and Health Services, the QBCC, the Residential Tenancies Authority and Trade and Investment Queensland. The public sector scheme is materially more generous:

• 6.5 working days, or 1.3 calendar weeks, of paid leave per year of service, with a proportionate amount for an incomplete year — about 13 weeks at 10 years, against 8.6667 in the general scheme;
• pro rata leave can be taken after 7 years, rather than being limited to a payment on termination;
• a minimum take period of 1 calendar week (exclusive of public holidays), and the same 3 months notice to direct at least 4 weeks where no agreement is reached;
• long service leave accrual transfers automatically when a permanent employee moves within or between agencies; and
• its own triggers for proportionate payouts, including declared surplus, voluntary retirement at 55 or over, ill-health retirement and death.

Local government employees are outside that directive, and Queensland public sector nurses, teachers and police have their own enterprise agreements layered on top — see our Queensland nurse salary guide and Queensland Police salary guide for the industrial context. Check your own directive, award or agreement before relying on any calculator.

Special Employment Situations

Continuity is where long service leave claims are won and lost. Under the Act and Queensland guidance, continuity of service is generally not broken by:

• absence on leave granted by the employer, whether paid or unpaid and for any length of time, including absence through illness or injury;
• termination because of illness or injury, where the same employer later re-employs you and you did no other work in the interval;
• termination where the same employer re-employs you within 3 months; and
• interruption or termination caused by an industrial dispute or a downturn in the employer’s trade, where you are later re-employed.

But not breaking continuity is not the same as accruing leave: unpaid approved leave is not service unless the Act, an industrial instrument or the commission says otherwise, so unpaid parental leave and leave without pay do not build a long service leave balance even though the clock is not reset. Moving between full-time, part-time and casual work with the same employer keeps one continuous period running, and service with related corporations counts as one employer.

Interstate and overseas service is now settled law. The Infosys Technologies Limited v Fox [2025] QCA 45 decision confirmed that there is no separate "substantial connection" test in section 93(b) of the Act. The question is simply whether the employment was geographically located in Queensland, judged on all the circumstances and the terms of the contract, and service "partly in" the State need not be a substantial proportion of the whole period. Each case is still decided on its own merits, so anyone with a meaningful overseas or interstate posting should have the specific facts assessed rather than assuming either outcome.

Long Service Leave QLD Worked Examples

Every figure below is produced by the same calculation engine that drives the calculator, and each one is asserted in our official-example test suite.

Common Long Service Leave QLD Mistakes

These are the errors we see most often, and most of them cost real money at the moment employment ends:

Related Queensland Employment Guides

Long service leave rarely matters on its own. If you are working out what a change of job or a termination is actually worth, read these alongside this guide:

• Long Service Leave Calculator QLD — the standalone tool version of the calculator above
• Long Service Leave NSW — different thresholds, including a 5-year pro-rata trigger
• Annual Leave Payout Calculator — what happens to annual leave when employment ends
• Overtime Pay Australia — why overtime is excluded from long service leave pay
• Penalty Rates Australia and Public Holiday Penalty Rates — how penalty and public holiday work affects ordinary hours
• Superannuation Calculator — super is payable on long service leave payments

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources and Further Reading

This guide is built on current Queensland Government guidance, the Queensland statute itself, and the administering bodies. The primary sources are:

• Business Queensland — Long service leave entitlements and continuous service
• Business Queensland — Calculating long service leave
• Business Queensland — Cashing-in and taking long service leave
• Business Queensland — QLeave portable long service leave
• Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) — current reprint effective 1 January 2026
• Queensland Industrial Relations Commission — forms (including Form 13 and Form 14)
• QLeave — portable long service leave for building and construction, contract cleaning and community services
• Long Service Leave (Directive 10/24) — Queensland public sector
• Infosys Technologies Limited v Fox [2025] QCA 45

Nothing in the long service leave division of the Act changed during 2025 or 2026 — the current reprint took effect 1 January 2026 and the amending Act behind it touched domestic violence provisions, not leave. What did change is administrative: the QIRC refreshed Form 13 and its long service leave application guide in December 2025, the contract cleaning levy fell to 0.5 per cent on 1 July 2026, and a QLeave weekly claim cap of $2,548 applied from the same date. A broader 2026 review of the industrial relations and workers’ compensation scheme is underway and could change these rules, so re-check before acting on a long-horizon plan.