What does an employer need to provide for the 88 days?

Normal, lawful employment records: payslips showing your business name and ABN, the dates and hours worked, and pay at legal rates, with tax withheld and super paid. The worker claims their visa extension with that evidence. You do not sign anything special or apply for anything, but if your payslips are wrong or the work was cash in hand, their days do not count and you will hear about it.

Do payslips count as proof of specified work?

Payslips are the core evidence working holiday makers rely on for their second and third year visa applications. Home Affairs can also ask for bank statements and employer references, and can contact the employer to verify. Clean payslips with the right ABN, dates and rates are the single most useful thing an employer provides.

What is the minimum wage for fruit pickers?

Under the Horticulture Award in 2026-27, the minimum for a casual adult Level 1 worker is $32.18 an hour. Piece rates are allowed on top of a written piecework agreement, but they must be set so an average competent worker earns at least 15 percent above the minimum, and there is a guaranteed hourly floor for each day worked.

Can backpackers be paid piece rates?

Yes, with a written piecework agreement made before the work starts. The rate must let an average competent worker earn at least 15 percent above the award minimum, and since 2022 every pieceworker also has a guaranteed minimum hourly floor: if the day's picking earns less than the casual hourly minimum for the hours worked, the employer tops it up.

Hiring Backpackers for Farm Work: An Employer’s Guide (2026)

September 13, 2026/FWA Staff

Working holiday makers pick a large share of Australia’s fruit, and they come with something no other workforce has: a visa rule that makes them actively want farm work in regional postcodes. Hire them properly and you get motivated workers on a deadline. Get the paperwork wrong and you cost them their second year and yourself a Fair Work problem.

This is the employer’s side of the arrangement, in plain language. Where a rule has edge cases we say so and point at the government source, because visa rules change and your obligations sit with what Home Affairs and Fair Work publish today, not what a mate remembers from 2019.

Why backpackers want your job

Working holiday makers on 417 and 462 visas can earn a second year in Australia by doing 88 days of specified work, mostly plant and animal cultivation, in an eligible regional postcode. A third year exists for those who do six months in their second year.

That’s the engine. A backpacker three weeks into their trip isn’t doing you a favour taking a picking job; they need it, they need it in the right postcode, and they need every day to count. Workers on a visa clock show up, because a day not worked is a day their extension slips.

What the 88 days requires from you

Nothing special, and that’s the point most guides miss: you don’t register, sponsor, or sign government forms. You employ them lawfully like any casual, and your ordinary records become their visa evidence.

Concretely, that means:

Payslips with your business name and ABN, dates, hours and rates. This is the evidence their application stands on.
Legal pay. Work paid below legal rates doesn’t count toward their 88 days, so underpaying a backpacker also strips the visa value out of the job.
Tax and super handled properly. Register as an employer of working holiday makers with the ATO, withhold at the working holiday maker rates, pay super as normal.
The right postcode. Eligibility is by postcode. Check yours on the Home Affairs specified-work pages before you promise anyone their days count.

Cash in hand does none of this. It doesn’t count for the visa, it exposes you, and it burns the worker. The farms that get returning crews year after year are the ones whose paperwork is boring and correct.

What you must pay

The floor for casual adult horticulture work under the Horticulture Award (Level 1) is $32.18 an hour in 2026-27. Rates step up with classification level, and they change every 1 July, so check Fair Work’s pay tools at the start of each season. Our pay rates guide keeps the current award tables in one place.

Piece rates are legal and common, with three conditions:

A written piecework agreement before the work starts.
The rate must be set so an average competent worker earns at least 15 percent above the award minimum.
A guaranteed hourly floor: since 2022, if a worker’s piece earnings for the day come in under the casual hourly minimum for the hours worked, you top them up.

Piece rates done right reward your fast pickers and cost you nothing on the slow days you’d have paid hourly anyway. Piece rates done as a way under the minimum are the single most common way farms end up in a Fair Work story.

Before anyone starts, check their visa with VEVO, the free Home Affairs service. Two minutes, and it tells you the visa is real and working rights are current.

WHV vs PALM vs locals

Honest one-paragraph versions, because each suits a different farm:

Working holiday makers are fast to hire, motivated by the visa, and short term by design; most stay for a season, some stay six months (the limit with one employer, with exceptions in some industries and regions). Best for seasonal peaks.

PALM scheme workers come from nine Pacific countries and Timor-Leste for seasonal stints of up to nine months, or longer placements up to four years. You get the same workers back season after season, but you become an approved employer first, with accommodation, welfare and reporting obligations that suit established operations with steady volume, not a four-week cherry pick.

Locals need no visa paperwork at all and can stay for years, and in most regions there aren’t enough of them for harvest peaks; that shortage is usually why you’re reading this page. Many farms run a local core year-round and staff the peaks with WHV workers on top.

Keeping them the full season

Turnover mid-harvest costs more than any ad. The basics that keep a crew:

Accommodation sorted or signposted. On farm, or a relationship with the working hostels in town. A worker with nowhere to live leaves.
Consistent hours. Backpackers are earning toward a target and counting days. Weeks of rain with no work and no communication scatter a crew fast; tell them the plan and they’ll mostly ride it out.
Train properly on day one. A morning of real instruction beats losing half the intake by Friday.
Pay weekly, on time. Nothing spreads through a hostel faster than a farm that pays late.

Treat them like next season’s returning crew, because the good ones are, and the hostels and Facebook groups where the next crew is listening hear everything either way.

Where to find them

Backpackers look for farm work on dedicated boards, in regional Facebook groups, and through working hostels. How to find farm workers in Australia compares every channel, and how to write a farm job ad shows the ad format that pulls applications, starting with saying “counts for 88 days” when it’s true.

Or go straight to where they’re already looking: post your job on Farm Work Australia. $79 flat for 30 days in front of around 9,000 seekers a month, most of them the exact audience this page is about, and if you get no applicants in 30 days we relist it free.