Pocket money for a 17 year old in Australia
Seventeen is the top of the ladder on this site. The rate is the law's, and the habit is theirs.
A 17 year old in Australia earns
$15.29an hour
About $76.45 a week if they do 5 hours of paid jobs. That's the real legal minimum for their age. From here the law sets the rate, not us.
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 17 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.
By seventeen most kids running Pocket Wage have a job outside the house or are about to. The pocket wage still applies to work at home, at the legal junior rate for a seventeen year old, and the Jobs Board becomes a way to earn extra rather than the main income. That is fine. The system was never about the money at home; it was about arriving at the real economy already knowing how it works.
If you are starting at seventeen, start anyway. One year of payslips, standard times and Pay-Rise Day is worth more than none, and the rate is the real one from day one.
The payslip at 17
A real payslip in every respect. Export the job history as a first résumé: five hundred paydays of showing up is a better reference than most first jobs give.
The Jobs Board at age 17, $15.29 an hour
| Job | Standard time | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Run the whole house for a weekend | 6 hr | $91.74 |
| Drive siblings to activities | 1 hr | $15.29 |
| Full garden maintenance | 2 hr | $30.58 |
| Cook and clean up dinner all week | 4 hr | $61.16 |
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 17 year olds.
Is seventeen too old to start a pocket wage?
No. The rate is the legal junior wage, the payslip is real, and one year of the habit still lands before the first adult job. Start this week.
How much is a seventeen year old's minimum wage?
The rate on this page, from the official source. In Australia it rises again at eighteen, nineteen and twenty; in the UK the next step is at eighteen.
What does Graduation mean?
The family rate has met the market rate and the first job has arrived. Pocket Wage exports the years of jobs, standard times and paydays as a first résumé, and the household becomes a former employer with a glowing reference.
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.