Pocket money for a 10 year old in Australia
Double digits. At ten the pocket wage has roughly doubled since five, and they know it.
A 10 year old in Australia earns
$6.49an hour
About $21.09 a week if they do 3¼ hours of paid jobs. That's 24.5% of the minimum wage in Australia.
Worked out from Fair Work Ombudsman — Annual Wage Review 2026, rates from 1 July 2026.
The rate at every age in Australia.
Pocket Wage is a straight line, one step every birthday, until it meets the real minimum wage. Here's the whole ladder in Australia.
- Pocket wage, paid by you
- Real minimum wage, paid by a boss
At 15, the legal minimum in Australia is $9.73 an hour. Pocket Wage draws a straight line from there back to zero, and a kid's age picks the spot on it.
What a 10 year old can do, and what it pays.
Every paid job has a standard time: how long it should take, not how long it did. Dawdle and you earn less a minute. Get good at it and you earn more. There's no timer to game and no price to haggle.
Ten year olds can mow a small lawn with supervision, cook a simple dinner, clean the whole bathroom and wash windows. Forty-five-minute jobs are realistic on a weekend. They are also old enough to keep their own record of jobs done and compare it to the payslip, which is the beginning of financial literacy nobody has to teach.
This is the age to talk about the ladder itself: show them the rate at eleven, twelve, thirteen. A ten year old who can see next year's pay rise coming has a reason to stick with the system through the boring weeks.
The payslip at 10
Jobs, pay, interest, balance. Ten is where a basic income line, if you use one, should be shown separately from earned wages so the difference is plain.
The Jobs Board at age 10, $6.49 an hour
| Job | Standard time | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Mow the lawn | 45 min | $4.87 |
| Cook a simple dinner | 40 min | $4.33 |
| Clean the whole bathroom | 30 min | $3.25 |
| Wash the windows | 30 min | $3.25 |
Example jobs and times. Family Duties, like clearing your own plate, are unpaid: belonging isn't billable.
How junior wages work in Australia.
Australia's national minimum wage is set every year by the Fair Work Commission and takes effect on 1 July. For workers under 21 the law publishes junior rates as a percentage of the adult wage: 36.8% under 16, rising each birthday to the full rate at 21. A fifteen year old with a casual job is legally owed the under-16 rate, and it goes up on their sixteenth birthday whether or not their boss remembers.
Pocket Wage anchors on that under-16 rate and draws a straight line back to zero, so every age from five to fifteen sits on the same ramp the law uses from fifteen to twenty-one. From sixteen the site shows the real junior rate. When the Commission announces a new wage each June, every rate on this site changes on 1 July, and so does every kid's pocket wage: Pay-Rise Day for the whole country.
The age a child can legally work varies by state, usually 13 to 15, with lighter rules for things like delivery rounds. The junior minimum wage applies to anyone employed, whatever their age.
Source: Fair Work Ombudsman — Annual Wage Review 2026, rates from 1 July 2026.
Questions parents ask about 10 year olds.
How much pocket money should a ten year old get?
The old rule of a dollar per year of age would give ten a week for nothing. A pocket wage at the rate for a ten year old, for about three hours of jobs a week, comes to the figure on this page, and it is earned.
Should a ten year old get pocket money without doing chores?
Family Duties are unpaid and expected. If you want a safety net, Pocket Wage supports a basic income line on the payslip, marked as not earned, so the kid sees the two kinds of money side by side.
What is a fair hourly rate for a ten year old?
The rate on this page: the country's minimum wage, scaled to age ten by the same straight line the law draws for junior workers. It is not a number anyone made up.
What is the average pocket money in Australia?
Surveys by Australian banks and kids' money apps typically find a few dollars a week at primary-school age, rising to ten or fifteen for teenagers, mostly given for nothing. A pocket wage is usually more, and all of it is earned.
Every birthday is a pay rise.
The app runs the whole thing: the Jobs Board, the standard times, a sacred weekly payday with a payslip, and Pay-Rise Day on every birthday. No cards, no stored money. The parent is the bank.