The requirements to renew your visa and go on an adventure in Australia for a second year are as follows:

• Being aged between 18 and 35 years old
• Possessing a valid passport
• Having worked for 3 months or 88 days in agriculture, horticulture, fishing, mining, or construction in eligible regions of Australia.

The eligible jobs are:

• Agricultural work
• Fishing and pearl diving
• Tree farming and felling
• Mining work
• Building and construction work
• Tourism and hospitality work in Northern, Remote or Very Remote Australia only

Government Website

Specified Work for Working Holiday Visa (Subclass 417) (homeaffairs.gov.au) : https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/work-holiday-417/specified-work

To renew your visa for a third year, you will need to have worked for 6 months this time in the same fields of work as for the second visa

Calculating the 88 Days

The most important requirement for renewing your visa is to have completed your 88 days, but to do that you need to know how to count them.

The rules set by the government are:

• In one block with the same employer
• In several blocks with one or multiple employers.

Contracts

Firstly, when calculating the work period, the type of contract (full-time/part-time) doesn’t matter. What matters is that the employer considers the complete work period as full-time. For example, you can work for 2 months on a farm in northern Australia and 1 month on a farm in southern Australia.

For people working full-time, meaning more than 35 hours per week, weekends can be included in the calculation of the 88 days. However, if you have worked part-time, you can only count the days you actually worked.

If you are employed by multiple employers at the same time, you can only count the days worked once.

Working Hours

In Australia, a full day of work corresponds to a minimum number of hours. To validate your 7-day week, you will need to work 7 to 8 hours per day, and 35 to 40 hours in 5 days depending on the job.

Example:

• Pauline worked on a farm for 3 months, 5 days a week, where the industry standard full-time is 5 days a week. In this case, she was able to count weekends, so a 7-day week.
• Theo worked for 60 days harvesting, then went on a 2-month trip. Then he completed 28 days in construction, which adds up to 88 days worked.

If you work less than 7 to 8 hours per day, the 7 days will not be counted, and you will have to work more days to reach the required number of hours.

Example:

• Léa currently works 5 hours per day, so she will need to work 7 days to count as a full week.
• Léo found a standard job in the farm industry that is 5 days a week, but he only works 4 days a week for 3 months. In this case, he can only count 4 days per week, not 7.

What type of salary can I expect?

Minimum wage

The minimum wage for all jobs in Australia will depend on the sector in which you work, and they are set by collective agreements. You will need to pay attention to this, as some second visa applications have been refused because the government considered that the people were underpaid. • Production operator: $23.41 per hour • Receptionist: $27.38 per hour • Electrician: $43.60 per hour • Forklift driver: $25.82 per hour • Picking: it will depend on the farms, it can vary from $21.38 to $28 or more.

But the national minimum wage is set at $21.38 per hour since July 2022, which represents $812.60 for a 38-hour week. You will be paid approximately every 1 to 2 weeks, depending on your employer.

Pay by performance

This mode of pay by performance can be suitable for some workers who have established a good rhythm and work quickly, in farms that have set fair compensation based on the work provided. Some even make a very good living, much better than those who are paid hourly.

However, for many workers, this means earning very little money. At the beginning, it’s normal to take some time to get used to it or only over longer periods simply because the boss has set rewards that are too low or not adapted to the season. Some PVTists have found themselves earning only a few dollars per hour and were far from the minimum wage (set at $21.38/hour from 1 July 2022), which is mandatory in Australia!

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, many Australians have gone to work in the fields to do the work that PVTists from all over the world normally do and have realized the difficulty of the work. In late 2021, the Australian Fair Work Commission decided to eliminate pay by performance. This measure applies since 28 April 2022 to full-time, part-time or casual jobs.

The positive consequence of this decision is that once hired, you will know exactly how much you will earn at a minimum and this puts an end to the abuses of some farmers. So, it’s excellent news!

Australia made this decision by requiring employers to determine fair compensation based on the average work rate in their profession and taking into account the work rate of their other employees. Therefore, if some workers don’t get the hang of it quickly or work too slowly, with this new measure, they risk being fired because they would cost too much for the company.

Implementation of a minimum wage of $25.41 for casual employees

On November 5th, 2021, the Fair Work Commission also decided that casual workers in fruit or vegetable picking would now receive a minimum of $25.41 per hour. This corresponds to the Australian minimum wage of $20.33 with an additional 25% granted to casual employees, i.e., occasional workers who do not have a guaranteed fixed number of working hours per week (for example, in fruit picking, it happens that one does not work for a few days because of rain or because there are no fruits to pick because they are not yet ripe).

Application to track working hours:

Record My Hours.

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/record-my-hours-app