Pocket money for a 5 year old in Australia
Five is where a pocket wage starts, and the rate is deliberately small: the point is the habit, not the money.
A 5 year old in Australia earns
$3.24an hour
About $4.86 a week if they do 1½ hours of paid jobs. That's 12.3% 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 5 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.
A five year old can do real work if the job is short and the finish line is obvious. Put the shoes in the rack. Carry the cutlery to the table. Feed the cat, with someone watching the scoop. Each job takes five minutes at most and pays a few cents, and that is exactly right. The lesson at five is that work has an end, and the end is when you get paid.
Do not start with a chart of ten jobs. Start with two, do them at the same time every day, and hand over the money on payday in coins they can hold. A five year old understands three coins in a jar far better than a number on a screen.
The payslip at 5
One line: jobs done, and what they paid. No deductions yet. The whole point is that the number on the payslip is the number in their hand.
The Jobs Board at age 5, $3.24 an hour
| Job | Standard time | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Put the shoes in the rack | 5 min | $0.27 |
| Carry the cutlery to the table | 5 min | $0.27 |
| Feed the cat | 5 min | $0.27 |
| Put the toys back in the box | 10 min | $0.54 |
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 5 year olds.
Is five too young to pay for jobs?
Not if the jobs are five minutes long and the pay arrives the same week. What is too young is a weekly amount that shows up whether or not anything happened, because that teaches the opposite lesson.
How many jobs a week should a five year old do?
About an hour and a half of paid work spread over the week, which is two or three short jobs a day. Family Duties, like clearing their own plate, are on top of that and unpaid.
Should I pay in cash?
Yes, at five. Coins in a jar make the maths visible. The app keeps the ledger, and you hand over the physical money on payday.
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.