Northern Territory Long Service Leave Calculator

How the entitlement is worked out

Section 8(1) of the Long Service Leave Act 1981 (NT) entitles an employee who has been employed by an employer for not less than 10 years of continuous service to long service leave of 1.3 weeks for each completed year of continuous service. Unlike the step then flat rate model used in several other jurisdictions, the Northern Territory's formula multiplies the full number of completed years by 1.3 weeks, which comes to 13 weeks at exactly 10 years.

The right to take the leave arrives in blocks: 13 weeks at 10 years, then a further block on completing each further 5 years (section 8(2)-(3)). The full 1.3 weeks per completed year is what is paid out if employment ends, except on dismissal for serious misconduct (see below).

Before the qualifying period: pro rata payments

Section 10(2) provides a pro rata payment of 1.3 weeks for each completed year of service where an employee's period of employment is at least 7 years but less than 10 years, and the employment ends other than by death, in one of the following ways: the employee reaches retiring age, the employer terminates the employment for a reason other than serious misconduct, which covers redundancy, or the employee resigns because of illness, incapacity, or a domestic or other pressing necessity.

From 10 years, section 10(1) provides that the full accrued credit is paid on any cessation of employment other than death, without any exclusion for the reason. Section 10(1A) is narrower: where an employee has reached 10 years but their employment ends because of serious misconduct, only completed 10 year or completed 5 year blocks are paid, and any partial period since the last completed block is forfeited. Section 10(3) provides that on death, the employee's personal representative receives whatever would otherwise have been payable under section 10(1) or (2).

Cashing out while employed

Like New South Wales and Victoria, the Northern Territory prohibits cashing out long service leave while employed. Section 10(4) provides that, except as provided elsewhere in that section, an employer must not pay, and an employee must not accept, any amount in lieu of long service leave to which the employee is entitled.

In practice this means the only payments in lieu permitted are the cessation based payouts under section 10(1), (1A), (2) and (3); there is no mechanism to cash out leave while still employed, in contrast to the agreement based cash out permitted in Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.

Taking leave in advance

No provision in the Act permits leave to be taken before the entitlement accrues. Section 8(6)(a) only allows leave to start as soon as practicable after it has accrued, or on an agreed later date, and section 11(8)(a) covers only postponing already accrued leave, with the rate of pay locked in as at the postponement agreement date.

Portable long service schemes

The Construction Industry Long Service Leave and Benefits Act 2005 (NT) established a scheme known as NT Build, which commenced on 1 July 2005. According to NT Build's own published information, workers accrue 6.5 days of long service leave for every 220 days of qualifying service, up to a maximum of 220 service days recognised per financial year, funded by a Ministerially determined levy on eligible Northern Territory construction projects worth at least 1,000,000 dollars. At most one year of service performed before registration with the scheme can be recognised.

The community services sector has no live portable scheme. A Portable Long Service Leave (Community Services Sector) Act 2024 was passed, but it was repealed in 2025 by the Portable Long Service Leave (Community Services Sector) Repeal Act 2025 before the scheme took effect. Readers searching for a Northern Territory community services portable scheme may find news coverage of the original 2024 Act; that Act has been repealed. This calculator does not model either the construction industry scheme or any community services scheme.

Pay basis: what rate leave is paid at

Section 11(3) sets the amount payable for each completed year of service as the employee's rate of pay, multiplied by their hours of work per week, multiplied by 1.3. The rate of pay used is the rate payable on the day immediately before the employee ceases employment or takes leave, or the agreed postponement date.

What makes the Northern Territory's method structurally different from South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT is that hours of work per week are calculated separately for each individual year of the qualifying period, rather than as one blended average over a fixed look back window, as illustrated by the worked examples in the Act itself. Overtime hours are excluded from the hours of work per week definition, and the rate of pay excludes overtime as well as district, site and climatic allowances and penalty rates.

How service is counted

Section 7(1) defines an employee broadly, covering a person working under a contract of service or apprenticeship on salary, wages or piecework rates, whether full time, part time or casual, or as an outworker, with no minimum hours threshold.

Section 12(4) lists breaks that do not count against continuity, including employer action taken to avoid long service leave obligations, an industrial dispute where the employee returns under a settlement, a stand down for slackness of trade, a post apprenticeship gap of up to 12 months, or any other reason where the employee is re-employed within 2 months. Section 12(5) provides that an absence that is not paid leave and not motivated by avoiding the Act does not itself count towards the employment period. Where a business is transferred, sections 12(8) and (9) define transfer broadly, covering transmission, conveyance, assignment or succession, whether by agreement, by will, under letters of administration, or by operation of law, and deem continuity unbroken with prior service counted as service with the new employer; sections 12(6) and (7) extend the same treatment to transfers between related corporations.

Taking the leave: notice

Section 8(7) requires an employer to give an employee not less than 2 months notice of the date from which long service leave is to be granted and taken, unless the employee agrees otherwise. That is close in length to, though worded differently from, the ACT's 60 day written notice requirement.

What this calculator does not model

This tool calculates the general entitlement under the Long Service Leave Act 1981 (NT) only, using a single weekly pay figure. It does not reproduce the year by year hours worked calculation that section 11(3) actually uses for employees whose hours varied across their years of service, and it does not model the NT Build construction industry scheme, which uses its own day based formula, or any award or agreement that may provide a better entitlement.