Pocket money for an 11 year old in Australia
Eleven is the last year before the payslip starts to grow up, and the jobs are now genuinely useful to the household.
An 11 year old in Australia earns
$7.14an hour
About $24.99 a week if they do 3½ hours of paid jobs. That's 27% 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 an 11 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.
Eleven year olds can do a full load of washing from basket to wardrobe, cook dinner for the family with a recipe, clean the kitchen after it, and do the weekly vacuum and mop. An hour of work in a block is fine on a weekend. Many can also babysit a younger sibling for short periods with a parent in the house, which is a real job with a real standard time.
Talk about next year now: at twelve the payslip gets a locked savings line. Explaining it a year early turns it into a milestone rather than a deduction.
The payslip at 11
Jobs, pay, interest, balance, and a preview of the locked savings line that starts at twelve. Show it as zero this year so the change is not a surprise.
The Jobs Board at age 11, $7.14 an hour
| Job | Standard time | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Do a full load of washing, basket to wardrobe | 40 min | $4.76 |
| Cook dinner for the family | 45 min | $5.36 |
| Clean the kitchen after dinner | 20 min | $2.38 |
| Vacuum and mop the floors | 40 min | $4.76 |
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 11 year olds.
How much should an eleven year old earn from chores?
At the hourly rate for an eleven year old, for around three and a half hours a week, the weekly figure is on this page. What they earn depends on the hours, and the hours are the family's dial.
Can an eleven year old have a paid job outside the home?
In most countries not yet, apart from things like paper rounds where local rules allow. The pocket wage is the only wage they can earn, which is why it is worth getting right.
What is a locked savings slice?
A share of each payslip, from about twelve, that goes into savings they cannot spend until a date you both agree. It is the family version of a term deposit and it starts next year.
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.