What changed in cleaning award rates on 1 July 2026?

Every year the Fair Work Commission conducts an Annual Wage Review. An Expert Panel considers submissions from unions, employer groups, governments and others, weighs economic conditions including inflation, wage growth, productivity and the relative living standards of award-reliant workers, and issues a decision, usually in June.

That decision sets a percentage increase to the national minimum wage and to minimum rates in modern awards, including the Cleaning Services Award MA000022. The increase does not take effect on 1 July itself. It takes effect from the first full pay period commencing on or after 1 July, which for most payroll cycles means the change lands a few days into the month.

Because the exact percentage is set each year and is not predictable in advance, this article deliberately does not quote a 2026 figure. Publishing a number that later proves wrong is worse than useless for a business trying to budget. The reliable path is the Fair Work Commission decision and the updated pay guide, both linked from the Fair Work Ombudsman website.

The annual review does not change every number in the award. It adjusts minimum rates, and a defined set of related figures move with them. Other conditions in the award only change when the award itself is varied through a separate Fair Work Commission process.

A wage increase does not automatically increase what a client pays. What happens next depends entirely on the contract. Most commercial cleaning agreements fall into one of three patterns, and it is worth knowing which one applies before July arrives rather than after an invoice changes.

The first pattern is a fixed price for a fixed term with no rise-and-fall clause. The contractor absorbs the increase until the term ends. The second is a price with an annual review clause tied to an index such as the Consumer Price Index, which may or may not track the actual wage movement. The third, and the most honest in a labour-intensive service, is a clause that permits an adjustment specifically where minimum award rates increase, usually limited to the labour component of the price and supported by evidence.

For a buyer, the third structure is not a loophole. It is the mechanism that keeps a contractor solvent and the site staffed at the hours originally quoted. A contract with no adjustment mechanism at all, running across several annual increases, creates pressure to quietly reduce hours instead.

The arithmetic is not complicated, but it has to be done on the labour component only. Materials, equipment, insurance and administration do not move with the award.

Start by isolating the weekly labour hours the site actually consumes, multiplied by the applicable rate for the classification and shift times involved. Apply the new minimum rate to that figure. Add the on-costs that scale with wages, because superannuation, workers compensation premiums, payroll tax and leave accruals all rise proportionally with the base wage. The result is the true increase to the cost of delivering the site. Applying the headline percentage to the whole contract value overstates it, because it wrongly inflates the non-labour components as well.

This is also the moment to check that the site is still staffed at the hours in the original scope. A wage increase applied to a roster that has already been trimmed simply locks in a reduced service at a higher price.

The most common payroll error is applying the new rate from 1 July rather than from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. For a fortnightly cycle that starts mid-week, the difference is real money and it is a compliance exposure.

The second is forgetting the flow-on to allowances. When the standard rate moves, every allowance expressed as a percentage of that rate moves with it, and payroll systems that hold allowances as hard-coded dollar amounts silently fall behind.

The third is failing to re-check classification. A cleaner who has taken on leading hand duties, or who now operates equipment that the award assigns to a higher classification, should be reclassified. An annual increase applied to the wrong classification just entrenches an underpayment at a higher number.

The fourth is on the buyer side: accepting a percentage increase across the whole invoice without asking how much of the price is labour. In a service where labour is dominant but not total, that difference is worth asking about.

The Fair Work Commission publishes the Annual Wage Review decision and a summary of the percentage increase and its operative date. The Fair Work Ombudsman then republishes the pay guide for each modern award, including MA000022, with the new hourly and weekly rates for every classification and employment type, plus the updated allowances table. The Fair Work Ombudsman pay calculator produces a rate for a specific shift, including penalties.

Employers should also check whether an enterprise agreement applies to their workforce, since a registered agreement can set different rates provided employees are better off overall against the award. Agreements have their own increase mechanisms and their own review dates.

For businesses buying cleaning services, the useful takeaway is not the percentage itself. It is that labour costs in this industry move on a known annual cycle, and a contract that anticipates that cycle produces more stable service than one that pretends it does not exist.