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FairWork Mate Insights · Wage compliance

What Australia's wage-compliance record actually shows

A plain-English read of the Fair Work Ombudsman's published enforcement outcomes — where underpayments happen, how much gets recovered, and where the risk is heading. Sector-level patterns, drawn entirely from the public record.

Source: Fair Work Ombudsman enforceable undertakings + court outcomes (FY14–15 to FY25–26). Aggregate figures only — no individual employers named.

$601.6M
recovered for workers via enforceable undertakings
153,754
workers back-paid
$67.9M
court penalties across 516 matters
$1,873
average back-pay per worker

Where the money went back

Share of recovered back-pay by sector. A handful of industries account for most of it — useful if you're benchmarking your own compliance risk.

Higher Education$178.5M · 30%
Banking$56.0M · 9%
Healthcare$48.0M · 8%
Aged Care$38.9M · 6%
Financial Services$32.0M · 5%
Not-for-profit$31.7M · 5%
Retail$29.9M · 5%

Recoveries are climbing fast

Back-pay recovered through enforceable undertakings, by financial year. The direction of travel is the headline every compliance team should see.

$29.8M
$59.3M
$45.7M
$99.2M
$91.9M
$148M
$126.5M
19–2020–2121–2222–2323–2424–2525–26
Roughly a 5× rise since FY19–20. Recoveries jumped from $29.8M to a $148.0M peak — driven by large back-pay settlements and the wage-theft criminal offence that started 1 January 2025. Enforcement isn't slowing down.

What actually gets employers in trouble

Breach types across the 516 court matters. Note how often it's record-keeping — not just the underpayment itself. Clean records are the cheapest insurance an employer has.

Compliance-notice breaches58%
Record-keeping / payslips30%
Underpayment of wages29%
Misrepresentation4%
Hindering inspectors4%

What this means for you

Employers

If you're in higher ed, health, aged care or retail, you're in the FWO's highest-recovery sectors — and record-keeping trips up more employers than underpayment itself. Pressure-test your own exposure before the FWO does.

Estimate your exposure →
Workers

The average back-paid worker was owed $1,873 — and underpayments cluster in specific sectors and awards. If you're in one of them, it's worth a two-minute check against your award rate.

Check if you're underpaid →
How we compiled this. Figures are aggregated from the Fair Work Ombudsman's published enforceable undertakings and court-outcome records (FY14–15 to FY25–26), and refresh as new outcomes are published. We report sector-level patterns only and do not name individual employers. Enforceable undertakings are frequently entered into without any admission of liability. This is general information, not legal advice — verify anything specific with the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) or a qualified professional.

FairWork Mate Insights — a living view of Australia's wage-compliance record, built on public, aggregate FWO data.