Sick Leave Entitlements in Australia: The Complete Guide to Personal/Carer's Leave

The short answer: 10 days a year, pro-rata for part-time

Under the National Employment Standards (NES), full-time employees in Australia are entitled to 10 days of paid personal/carer's leave every year. Part-time employees receive a pro-rata entitlement based on their ordinary hours of work. Casual employees are not entitled to paid personal leave at all — they receive a casual loading instead. Personal/carer's leave is one of 11 minimum entitlements every employee must be told about — see the Fair Work Information Statement guide for the full list.

This single entitlement is commonly called "sick leave," but it officially covers two different situations: taking time off because you are unwell, and taking time off to care for an immediate family or household member who is unwell. Both draw from the exact same 10-day balance.

How the 1/26 accrual formula works

The NES doesn't hand you 10 days upfront on day one — leave accrues progressively throughout the year, starting from your very first day of employment, including any probation period. The formula is:

Personal leave accrued = Ordinary hours worked in the year ÷ 26

Worked example — full-time employee

Worked example — part-time employee

Notice both employees get the same proportional entitlement — 10 days at whatever their ordinary daily hours happen to be. The number of hours in the balance differs, but the number of working days off is the same.

Sick leave and carer's leave are the same entitlement

A common misconception is that carer's leave is an extra entitlement on top of sick leave. It isn't — they come from the identical 10-day pool. You can use your leave for either purpose, in any combination:

• Sick leave — when you personally are unfit for work due to illness or injury, including mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, or stress, and pregnancy-related illness.
• Carer's leave — when you need to care for or support a member of your immediate family or household who is sick, injured, or facing an unexpected emergency.

An "unexpected emergency" for carer's leave purposes isn't limited to illness — it can include things like needing to pick up a child from school unexpectedly, provided the situation is genuinely unforeseen.

Do casual employees get sick leave?

No. Casual employees are not entitled to paid personal/carer's leave under the NES — this is one of the fundamental trade-offs of casual employment, offset by the casual loading (typically 25%) paid on every hour worked instead.

Casual employees do still get some related entitlements:

• 2 days of unpaid carer's leave per occasion
• 2 days of unpaid compassionate leave per occasion
• 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave per year — this specific entitlement applies to casuals too, unlike standard personal leave

When can your employer ask for a medical certificate?

Your employer can request evidence that would satisfy a reasonable person that your leave was genuinely necessary — but the Fair Work Act does not set a fixed rule specifying exactly when this applies, or precisely how many days trigger the requirement. In practice:

• A medical certificate from a registered health practitioner (doctor, dentist, physiotherapist, psychologist, and others) is the most common accepted evidence.
• A statutory declaration is an equally valid alternative — useful if accessing a GP is difficult, costly, or impractical for a single day off. These can be made at a pharmacy, post office, or before a justice of the peace.
• Many workplace policies specifically require evidence only for absences of 2 or more consecutive days, or where a pattern of absences raises a genuine concern (such as recurring Monday or Friday absences) — but this is a policy choice, not a fixed legal threshold.
• A medical certificate does not need to disclose the specific nature of your illness — it only needs to confirm you were unfit for work during the relevant period.

Does unused sick leave carry over, and is it paid out?

Personal/carer's leave accumulates indefinitely if you don't use it — unlike some other leave types, there is no annual reset or expiry. An employee who rarely takes sick leave over many years of service can build up a very large balance, which acts as a genuine safety net if a serious illness occurs later.

Compassionate leave — a separate but related entitlement

Compassionate leave (sometimes called bereavement leave) is a distinct entitlement from personal/carer's leave, though the two are often confused. All employees, including casuals, are entitled to 2 days per occasion when:

• An immediate family or household member has a life-threatening illness or injury
• An immediate family or household member dies
• A pregnancy in the employee's immediate family ends in stillbirth
• The employee, or their spouse or de facto partner, has a miscarriage

For permanent employees, compassionate leave is paid at the base rate for the ordinary hours that would have been worked. For casual employees, it is unpaid.