Unpaid wage recovery up 27% this financial year, totalling $453m
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The Fair Work Ombudsman has recovered an additional $95 million in worker wages in the 2025–26 financial year after strengthening investigative procedures.
The uptake represents a 27 per cent increase in retrieved wages for Australian workers this year, with over $450 million in wage and entitlement back payments returned to more than 180,000 workers.
According to the national regulator, proactive investigations have almost doubled in the past years, up 86 per cent to more than 2,680, as a result of sustained and repeated non-compliance. These proactive measures have secured over $10 million more in back payments than the previous year, where $35.2 million was returned to workers.
As identified by FWO Anna Booth, “our proactive investigations are conducted primarily in priority sectors where planned field work and campaigns and inquiries are designed to uncover drivers of non-compliance to help deliver sustained change”.
More than 50 per cent of the $453 million recovered in the past financial year came from the large corporate sector, with interim data revealing approximately $217.3 was returned to 110,000 workers as a result of 1,161 disputes, proactive investigations, or self-reports.
An enforceable undertaking with Westpac, 23 compliance notices and 13 infringement notices to corporate employers were also regarded as a significant part of the rectifications.
Another sector that saw significant FWO attention was that of building and construction, which has totalled more than $23 million in worker underpayments since November 2022, $6.8 million of which was recovered in the most recent financial year. Nearly 3,000 matters and 14 litigations saw payment rectification to 932 workers in this sector.
In addition, the FWO identified more than 1,000 disputes and $24 million in payment rectification to 10,546 disability support service workers. The 53 compliance notices contributed to approximately a third of recovered entitlements.
The cumulative back payment retrieval now stands at almost $2.5 billion.
Booth said: “These recoveries also help to ensure all those businesses that pay correctly are not at a disadvantage for doing so.”
“My message to employers, workers and their advocates everywhere is don’t let the adversarialism that can beset over expansion of rights – in legislative reform and bargaining – stop us working together to build the culture of compliance that we have as agreed common ground.”
“We know there’s a continuum of non-compliance, from inadvertent mistakes to deliberate acts, and we act proportionately to what we find, but we’re here to help all parties with free resources and advice to support sustained compliance.”
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An employee is a person who has signed a contract with a company to provide services in exchange for pay or benefits. Employees vary from other employees like contractors in that their employer has the legal authority to set their working conditions, hours, and working practises.
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