The new minimum rates, from the determination
| Classification | Minimum weekly (full-time) | Minimum hourly |
|---|---|---|
| Enrolled nurse supervising other direct care employees | $1,542.00 | $40.58 |
| Registered nurse level 1, first year | $1,571.60 | $41.36 |
| Registered nurse level 1, 1 to 4 years | $1,654.30 | $43.53 |
| Registered nurse level 1, over 4 years | $1,801.10 | $47.40 |
| Registered nurse level 2, first 3 years | $1,947.70 | $51.26 |
| Registered nurse level 2, over 3 years | $2,046.00 | $53.84 |
| Registered nurse level 3 | $2,094.20 | $55.11 |
| Registered nurse level 4 | $2,390.30 | $62.90 |
| Registered nurse level 5 | $2,711.30 | $71.35 |
Those are award minimums for full-time base hours; the determination also resets the full shift, weekend, public holiday and casual tables (a casual EN supervising direct care, for example, has a minimum of $50.73 an hour, rising to $101.46 on a public holiday). The rates apply from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 August 2026. Student enrolled nurses have their own scale, from $29.54 an hour. Enterprise agreements can and often do pay above these floors; what the case moved is the floor itself.
How the case got here
The Aged Care Work Value Case is really three decisions stacked over four years, and the arithmetic only makes sense as a stack:
- Stage 2 (2023): an interim 15 per cent rise for direct care workers, the down payment while the Commission kept working.
- Stage 3
([2024]
FWCFB 150, March 2024): the structural decision for personal care
workers, assistants in nursing, home care workers and support staff. It set a
benchmark of $1,223.90 a week for a Certificate III qualified personal care worker
and delivered total increases of 18 to 28.5 per cent across the classifications,
phased over 1 January and 1 October 2025. This is the decision containing the
finding, at paragraph 24, that the work
has historically been undervalued because of assumptions based on gender
, tracing the undervaluation to the incomplete implementation of the 1972 Equal Pay Case. - The nurses’ decision ([2024] FWCFB 452, 6 December 2024): RN and EN rates, phased across 1 March 2025, 1 October 2025 and now 1 August 2026, the tranche PR812118 finalises.
Across the whole case, the Government’s
own
summary counts roughly 400,000 aged care workers with higher award wages, and its
quarterly financial reporting attributes $3.8 billion of annual funding to the
Stage 3 rises and $2.6 billion to the nurses’ decisions. The union that ran the
nurses’ application, the ANMF, called the October 2025 instalment a
significant win for the ANMF and our members
that finally recognises the
true worth of Australia’s nursing and care workforce
; that is
the
federation’s own characterisation, and the celebratory framing is
theirs.
The stacking detail worth knowing
Three weeks before this tranche, every modern award rate, aged care included, rose 4.75 per cent under the Annual Wage Review 2026, effective 1 July. Because PR812118 was signed on 15 July, its tables already incorporate that uplift: the 1 August figures above are the final, stacked rates, not an amount to be added on top of the July rise. (The Annual Wage Review announcement itself is also a candid macro document: the panel noted the RBA expected 4.8 per cent inflation to June 2026 and that closing the real-wage gap would have taken “well over 5 per cent”.)
Both sides of the ledger
For workers, the case is the largest structural repricing of feminised award work in decades, and its completion is a dated fact worth marking. For providers, it is the single biggest cost driver in the sector’s books: StewartBrown’s December 2025 survey puts staff costs at 72.53 per cent of operating revenue and attributes the rise to these decisions, and 17.2 of the 32.8 percentage points of indexation inside the current AN-ACC price exist specifically to fund them. Two supports soften the August step: the Government’s Historical Leave Liabilities Grant has a tranche “expected August 2026” to help providers fund the leave-liability on-costs of the rise, and its provider fact sheet confirms Support at Home subsidies carry the increase through automatically from 1 August. Whether the next AN-ACC price does the same for residential care is, as we report separately, an open question with ten weeks on the clock.
Update, 28 August 2026: the grant this story called
“expected August 2026” has opened, and it has a deadline. The Department
of Health, Disability and Ageing published grant opportunity GO8512 on
25 August 2026, titled Aged Care Award Wages - Historical Leave
Liabilities Increases - 1 August 2026
. Its stated purpose is to provide $12.033
million in 2026-27 in one-off funding to eligible registered providers to pay eligible
registered and enrolled nurses working in aged care to take their leave entitlements at the
increased wage rates effective from 1 August 2026
, on the reasoning that accumulated
leave liabilities for eligible registered and enrolled nurses working in aged care will have
increased as a result of the FWC ACWVC decision that applied from 1 August 2026
.
Selection is demand driven, it covers all states and territories, and applications
close at 2.00pm ACT time on 6 October 2026. Two things a provider should note: it is
confined to registered and enrolled nurses under this decision, not to the wider direct-care
workforce, and the department states that privately funded facilities such as independent
living and retirement villages are not eligible. Nothing else on this page has changed.
A note on the figures
Every dollar figure in the table is transcribed from determination PR812118 as signed on 15 July 2026 (downloaded from fwc.gov.au and checked on 18 July 2026); we did not use secondary summaries of the rates. Percentage increases for Stage 3 are from the Commission’s own summary of [2024] FWCFB 150. Worker counts and funding attributions are the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s published figures, cited where they appear.
Primary sources
- FWC determination PR812118, Nurses Award 2020, signed 15 July 2026, operative 1 August 2026 (PDF).
- FWC Expert Panel decision [2024] FWCFB 452, 6 December 2024 (the nurses’ decision).
- FWC summary of decision [2024] FWCFB 150, 15 March 2024 (Stage 3; the gender undervaluation finding).
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Better and fairer wages for aged care workers.
- Department provider fact sheet: nurses decision (award scope; Support at Home pass-through).
- ANMF media release, 1 October 2025 (the union’s stated position).
- FWC, Annual Wage Review 2026, announcement of decision (the 4.75 per cent uplift from 1 July 2026).
- GrantConnect, GO8512: Aged Care Award Wages - Historical Leave Liabilities Increases - 1 August 2026 (published 25 August 2026, read 28 August 2026): the $12.033 million in 2026-27, the eligibility confined to registered and enrolled nurses, the demand-driven selection process, the coverage of all states and territories, and the close of 2.00pm ACT time on 6 October 2026. Added 28 August 2026 with the update above.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Better and fairer wages for aged care workers (page last updated 25 August 2026, read 28 August 2026): that the Government is
supporting the award wage increases, including on-costs and the increased cost of historical leave liabilities
, the GO8512 listing, and that privately funded facilities are not eligible.
Spotted an error? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited sources and log the outcome here.