Annual leave is federal. A Queensland employee gets the same 4 weeks a year as everyone else under section 87 of the Fair Work Act, based on their own ordinary hours. What QLD changes is which public holidays fall inside your leave, and those days do not come off your balance.
| Component | Formula | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Accrual rate (FULL-TIME) | 4 wks × 38h ÷ 52 | 2.923 hrs/wk |
| Hours accrued | 2.923 × 52 wks | 152.42 hrs |
| Hourly base rate | - | $35.00 |
| Base leave value | 152.42 × $35.00 | $5,334.62 |
| 17.5% leave loading | base × 0.175 | + $933.56 |
| Total payout | - | $6,268.17 |
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Under section 89 of the Fair Work Act, if a public holiday falls inside a period of paid annual leave you are taken to be on the public holiday, not on leave. The day is paid and it is not deducted from your balance. So the same week off costs you fewer hours when it contains a holiday.
Queensland has 12 full-day public holidays in 2026, and 8 of them fall on a weekday, which is when a holiday actually saves you leave. A holiday landing on a Saturday or Sunday you never work saves you nothing. QLD also has 1 part-day holiday (Christmas Eve), which cover only part of the evening.
The full QLD calendar for 2026 and 2027, with the substitute-day rules, is on QLD public holidays. To find the weeks that already sit beside a holiday, see long weekends in Australia.
Annual leave comes from the federal Act. Long service leave does not: it comes from the Industrial Relations Act 2016 (QLD), administered by Queensland Industrial Relations. The two accrue at the same time and neither reduces the other.
In Queensland the full long service entitlement is 8.6667 weeks at 10 years, plus a further 4.3333 weeks after another 5 years (13 weeks at 15), and a pro-rata payout starts at 7 years, which is necessary but not sufficient. In QLD a plain voluntary resignation before 10 years can pay nothing, so read the conditions before you resign. Full detail on QLD long service leave.
It is worth being explicit, because plenty of pages imply otherwise. The 4-week entitlement, the accrual rate of your ordinary weekly hours divided by 13, the rule that unused annual leave is always paid out when you leave under s.90, and the cash-out rules under ss.92 to 94 are all federal and identical in every state and territory. Part-timers get the same 4 weeks pro rata on their own hours: see the part-time annual leave calculator.
The federal rules, and the state details that sit on top of them.