Australia Working Holiday Specified Work Day Calculator

How many days do you need for a second or third visa?

Home Affairs does not ask for "3 months" in the abstract. It converts the requirement into calendar days. For a second Working Holiday Maker visa the minimum is 88 calendar days; for a third it is 179 calendar days. Those figures are the 3 and 6 shortest calendar months of the year, and they include weekends or equivalent rest days that fall inside your period of employment.

The same counting section is published on both the subclass 417 and subclass 462 specified work pages, and it states that it applies equally to both visas. So the day thresholds are identical; what differs between the two visas is which industries and which areas are approved.

You cannot compress the requirement into a shorter span by working longer days. Home Affairs states that you cannot complete the specified work requirement in a total period shorter than 3 or 6 calendar months, and that work carried out on one calendar day can never be counted as more than one day, even across two employers or two shifts.

How does the calculator turn dates into qualifying days?

Each work period is converted with the department's own equivalence test: you must complete the same number of normal work days or shifts that a full-time employee in that role and industry would work across a 3-month or 6-month period. Home Affairs lists three ways to meet it, including working five days a week continuously, working fewer than five days a week over a longer period, and combining short full-time and part-time blocks.

This tool reproduces that test with the inputs you have: the calendar length of the period and the average days you worked each week. Paid work is counted as calendar days multiplied by your weekly days divided by five, rounded down. A 122-day period at two and a half days a week therefore yields 61 qualifying days, which matches the department's own worked example of five days a fortnight over four months. Volunteer recovery work is counted differently, because any day on which you worked can be counted as a full day.

What are the four rules that decide your total?

1. Industry. The work must be in an approved industry for your subclass. Mining is approved for 417 and not for 462. Fishing and pearling and tree farming and felling are approved for 462 in Northern Australia only.
2. Designated area. The workplace must sit inside one of the five designated areas, and the industry must be approved in that area. Tourism and hospitality, for example, only counts in Northern Australia or Remote and Very Remote Australia, plus postcodes 4406, 4416, 4498 and 7215.
3. Postcode. The postcode must appear on the Home Affairs table for that designated area and your subclass. Being "near a regional town" is not the test; the four-digit postcode is.
4. Pay and visa status. Specified work must be paid in line with Australian legislation and awards, with a narrow exception for volunteer recovery work, and it must have been done while you held the qualifying visa.

Which industries count for 417 and which for 462?

The two lists overlap heavily, and the differences are where most claims fail. The table below reflects the approved industry and area lists published on each subclass page on 29 October 2026.

Home Affairs also states that it is temporarily applying flexibility so that work supporting the ongoing operations of a specified industry, such as administrative and cleaning support services, may be accepted in an eligible postcode. That flexibility is applied case by case, so the calculator treats an unusual role inside an approved industry as something to confirm with the department rather than a certainty.

Secondary processing is excluded on both visas. Winemaking, brewing and distillation, milling, small-goods manufacturing, and retail dairy or butchery work do not count as plant and animal cultivation. General garden maintenance is excluded as well, because the cultivation task has to be your primary employment task.

Does the postcode decide whether your days count?

Yes, and it is the single most common reason a claim loses days. Home Affairs publishes separate postcode tables for five designated areas: Regional Australia, Northern Australia, Remote and Very Remote Australia, bushfire declared areas, and natural disaster declared areas. Each subclass page carries its own copies of those tables, and the tables are updated. Postcodes were added to the bushfire list as recently as 5 April 2025.

This page does not reproduce those tables. Copying several thousand postcodes into a calculator would create a second, stale version of an official list that changes, and a wrong postcode check is worse than no check. Instead, the tool asks you to confirm that you have looked your postcode up on the table for your area, and it will not add days for a postcode you have not checked or that is not listed.

To show how literal the test is, take New South Wales. The Regional Australia table for NSW begins at postcode 2311 and runs in blocks such as 2328 to 2411 and 2420 to 2490. Postcode 2000, in central Sydney, does not appear there, so a Sydney cafe shift cannot count no matter how the work is described. Postcode 2340 falls inside 2328 to 2411 and is listed. The gap between "regional in spirit" and "listed" is exactly where applications are refused.

You can check a postcode on the specified work page for your subclass: specified subclass 417 work or specified subclass 462 work. If your postcode is not on the table for the area you selected, the days do not count for that industry, even if the work itself was genuine.

What disqualifies a work period?

1. An industry that is not on the approved list for your subclass, such as mining while claiming under 462.
2. A postcode that is not on the designated area table, or a postcode you have not checked.
3. Unpaid work, including cash-in-hand arrangements that do not meet Australian pay obligations.
4. Voluntary work that is not bushfire or natural disaster recovery work.
5. Work done while holding a student visa, a visitor visa, or any other visa that is not the qualifying Working Holiday visa.
6. For a third visa, work done on your first Working Holiday visa, or work done before 1 July 2019.
7. Unpaid days lost to severe or seasonal weather. Home Affairs makes no exception for weather, so those days must be made up elsewhere.

Paid public holidays and paid sick days do count, because they are days for which you were paid. Unpaid leave does not. If your employment is covered by an award, the award sets what a normal day is, including rostering and penalty rates.

What should you do next?

1. Step 1: gather the dates before you count. Open your payslips or payment summaries and write down the first and last day of each job, not the month. The calendar length of the period is what produces the day total.
2. Step 2: look up every postcode. Check each workplace postcode on the table for the designated area you are relying on, on the page for your subclass. Note the table name, because the area you select in the calculator should match the table you checked.
3. Step 3: run each period through the calculator. Fix the failures it reports before you lodge. A period that fails on industry or postcode cannot be rescued by adding hours.
4. Step 4: check the visa window. Work for a second visa belongs to your first visa period, and work for a third belongs to your second. Days do not move between the two.
5. Step 5: keep the evidence. Pay slips, Australian bank statements covering the declared periods, a piece-rate agreement showing the rate per piece if you were paid that way, group certificates, payment summaries, tax returns and employer references are all accepted forms of proof. The evidence must cover every period you declare.

Why the same work can count once and not twice

Specified work is tied to the visa you held while you did it. Applicants for a second visa must have done the work while holding their first Working Holiday Maker visa; applicants for a third must have done theirs while holding the second, on or after 1 July 2019. Bridging visas are the exception, and only in a narrow form: if you applied for your next visa while your current visa was still in effect, and a bridging visa came into effect when that visa ceased, work done on the bridging visa can count towards a third visa. Work done on a bridging visa that followed a student visa does not.

Critical COVID-19 work in the health and medical sectors has its own carve-out. Former Working Holiday Makers who moved to a subclass 408 COVID-19 Pandemic event visa can count that work, and other specified work done on that visa, towards a second or third visa. The calculator flags bridging-visa rows separately rather than adding them, because the exception depends on facts it cannot see.

Do UK passport holders still need 88 days?

No. UK passport holders can be granted a second or third Working Holiday (subclass 417) visa without meeting the 3-month or 6-month specified work requirement if they apply on or after 1 July 2024 using their UK passport. That is an arrangement under the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement, and it applies to 417 only. A British citizen who later applies for a 462 is on the ordinary rules, and the 462 specified work requirement still applies in full.

If you tick the UK passport option, the calculator still shows your day total, because the total is useful if your circumstances change or if you hold more than one passport, but it also tells you the requirement may not apply to you at all.

What evidence should you keep for each period?

Keep the evidence for the whole period, not a sample. Home Affairs states that the proof must cover all periods you worked, and a gap in the bank statements is the usual reason a genuine period is questioned. Costs for the visa itself are set separately from any of this: the application charge for a second or third visa is listed in the department's Visa Pricing Estimator, and the fee changes, so check the current figure before you budget.

Where the two visas genuinely differ

Subclass 417 is open to a specific list of passports and includes mining as an approved industry. Subclass 462 is open to a different list, requires the work to be paid under Australian legislation and awards, and does not include mining at all. For 462, fishing and pearling and tree farming and felling are confined to Northern Australia, while plant and animal cultivation and construction are approved in Northern Australia and other specified areas of regional Australia.

Tourism and hospitality is identical on paper for both visas: Northern Australia or Remote and Very Remote Australia, plus the four postcodes 4406, 4416, 4498 and 7215. The approved occupations run from accommodation and food and beverage through to tour guides, dive instructors, gallery staff and event venue workers. A hotel reception role in Cairns or Darwin is a different proposition from the same role in suburban Brisbane, and the postcode, not the job title, is what separates them.

Both visas also share the six-month work limitation on a single employer, which is a separate condition from the specified work requirement. It limits how long you can work for one employer, not how many days you can count, and the two should not be confused when you are planning a season of work.