Payroll statistics Australia 2026

This is the final legislated increase under the current schedule, with no further scheduled rises. It sets the compliance baseline every Australian payroll system must calculate against.

The change replaces the previous $62,500 quarterly cap with a single annual figure, aligning with the move to per-pay-cycle super under Payday Super.

Just 37.4% report being "very prepared," with 6.9% not prepared at all. Payday Super requires employers to pay super alongside wages every pay cycle from 1 July 2026, rather than quarterly.

System integration issues follow at 37.9%. Managing super refunds and rejects (56.7%) and getting accurate employee data at onboarding (53.4%) are the top day-to-day pain points.

The employment rate stood at 64.0%, with a participation rate of 66.9%. Every one of those jobs runs through a payroll system.

The rate has held in a narrow band, keeping the national payroll base relatively stable year on year.

The figure covers payments to 15.5 million employee jobs nationally. It is the final edition of this ABS series before a successor measure replaces it.

Growth has eased slightly from 3.4% a year earlier, giving payroll teams a benchmark for annual salary review planning.

Modern award minimums rose 4.75% in the same review. Five years earlier, the rate stood at $21.38 per hour.

The figure comes from responses across 1,261 payroll, HR and finance professionals nationally, and has been the top-ranked risk for two years running.

Payroll technology and process issues follow closely at 45.1%, pointing to fragmented HR, rostering and finance systems as the dominant operational weak point.

Only 36.4% of organisations track payroll KPIs regularly at all, leaving a meaningful governance visibility gap at board level.

Lack of understanding of the technology (67.9%) and privacy concerns (56.3%) are the leading barriers, well ahead of job-displacement fears.

67.0% of those report satisfaction with their provider, though outsourcing relocates data and governance risk rather than removing it.

Top-quartile earners reach $215,876, placing senior payroll leadership within the executive pay band alongside comparable finance and HR management roles.

Cases typically run 12 to 18 months before detection, giving payroll fraud a longer runway than most other fraud types.

The region accounted for 183 cases, or 11% of the global sample, in the same study period.

Court penalties reached a record $23.7 million, with 73 new litigations filed over the same period.

Corporate penalties reach $7.825 million, or three times the underpayment amount, whichever is greater, marking the first time wage theft has been a federal criminal offence.

The category, which includes business email compromise used to redirect salary and supplier payments, has risen for two consecutive years.

False billing and payment redirection was the most-reported scam category among small businesses, with or without a financial loss.