How to count your 88 days in Australia
Counting specified work for the second Working Holiday visa (subclass 417), using the rules the Department applies.
What the 88 days are
A second Working Holiday visa (subclass 417) requires 88 days of specified work, done in a designated regional area, while you hold your first visa. A third visa requires 179.
What is counted is days — not total hours, and not the number of payslips. That is where nearly every mistake starts, because "day" means something precise and not obvious.
Counting on a full-time contract
On a full-time contract you count calendar days, not the days you actually turned up. Employed from 1 to 30 June is 30 days: Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays included, because they fall inside a continuous period of employment.
That is why one continuous engagement is worth more than several broken ones.
Counting as a casual or part-time worker
Here calendar days are not enough: what counts is how much you worked. The method works in blocks. Every block of hours equal to one full-time week — 35 hours in most covered industries — is worth 7 days. The hours left over are divided by 7, and every 7 extra hours add one more day.
Example: 80 hours in a pay period. 80 divided by 35 gives 2 full blocks, so 14 days, with 10 hours left over, worth 1 day. That is 15 days.
The result can never exceed the calendar days in the period: a huge week of overtime is still 7 days.
What counts as specified work
Agriculture and livestock, fishing and pearling, tree farming and felling, mining, construction. Tourism and hospitality also count, but only in northern and remote Australia, along with recovery work after a declared natural disaster.
The work must be done in a designated regional area, and what matters is the postcode of the place you work — not the registered address of whoever pays you. That distinction matters when you work through a labour hire agency based in a city.
The mistakes that cost people the visa
Counting worked days instead of calendar days on a full-time contract: you undercount, and work longer than you needed to.
Using the employer postcode instead of the workplace postcode: the period may not qualify at all.
Not keeping payslips. The Department asks for evidence, and without payslips the days do not exist, however real they were.
Being paid cash in hand. Those days do not count, and there is no way to prove them afterwards.
You can combine employers
Yes. The 88 days can be built from different employers, states and industries, as long as each period qualifies on its own. They do not have to be consecutive.
The one hard rule is that every day must be earned while you hold your first Working Holiday visa.
Count your days without guessing
Upload your payslips and the app applies these rules for you, period by period, and tells you how many days you have left.
Count your days without guessingFAQ
Do the 88 days have to be consecutive?
No. They can be split across periods, employers and areas, as long as each period meets the industry and regional requirements.
Do weekends count?
On a full-time contract yes, because they fall inside a continuous period of employment. On a casual contract only the hours you were actually paid for count, converted into days.
Does paid leave count?
Paid annual leave and sick hours appear on your payslip and go into the hours total. Unpaid absence does not, and never appears on a payslip anyway.
How many days for a third visa?
179 days of specified work, done while you hold your second Working Holiday visa.
Does hotel work count?
Only in northern and remote Australia. The same job in Sydney or Melbourne does not qualify.