How Much You Can Work While Studying in Australia

International students in Australia can currently work up to 48 hours per fortnight during term time, with no limit during scheduled course breaks.

That is the rule. The more useful discussion is what it actually pays for, and why your visa application cannot depend on it.

What the 48-hour fortnight means in practice

It is a fortnightly limit, not a weekly one, so you can work more in one week and less in the next as long as the two-week total stays inside 48 hours.

Breaching it is a visa condition breach, with real consequences including cancellation. Employers in student-heavy industries generally understand the limit, but the responsibility is yours, not theirs.

Keep your own record of hours. Do not rely on an employer's roster to prove compliance.

Term time versus scheduled breaks

Term time is any period your course is actively running, including exam periods.

Scheduled breaks are the official breaks in your university's academic calendar, such as the summer break between semesters. During these there is no hour limit.

Two things students get wrong: a week with no classes is not automatically a scheduled break, and if your course finishes and you are waiting for results, your conditions may still apply. Check your university's published calendar rather than assuming.

Common student jobs, and realistic pay

Hospitality, retail, food delivery, warehouse work, and on-campus roles such as library or student services positions.

On-campus jobs are usually the best of these: they understand the hour limits, they are close to your classes, and they occasionally connect to your field.

Australia has a statutory minimum wage and student jobs are generally covered by it. Cash-in-hand work below the minimum wage is common in some sectors and worth avoiding, because it is unenforceable, undocumented, and can complicate your compliance record. The national minimum wage is AUD 26.44 an hour from 1 July 2026, and most jobs are covered by an award that sets its own minimum rates.

Why you cannot build your finances on this

Here is the part that matters for your application.

Your visa requires you to prove financial capacity without counting part-time earnings. You must show around AUD 29,710 in living funds for year one, plus tuition, regardless of what you plan to earn.

This is not a technicality or a formality that can be argued around. An application that relies on future part-time income to close a funding gap does not meet the requirement, and gaps in funding are the second most common reason applications are refused. See the financial requirements guide.

Do the arithmetic yourself. At 48 hours a fortnight, term-time earnings cover part of your living costs, not your tuition, and not the funds you have to prove in advance.

Treat work as a supplement that makes your life more comfortable. Anyone encouraging you to treat it as your funding plan is setting you up for a refusal, or worse, for arriving underfunded.

A note on the students who get caught by this

The profile that concerns case officers most is the applicant whose plan is essentially to arrive and work, with study as the mechanism.

It shows up in a specific pattern: a low-cost course with no connection to the applicant's background, funds barely at the threshold, and a career answer that does not survive a follow-up question.

If that resembles your situation, the honest thing is to say so now rather than discover it at the decision stage. See the Genuine Student guide and the refusal reasons guide.

Work rights after you graduate

This is where the picture changes substantially. The 485 post-study work visa allows full-time work for 18 months to 3 years depending on your qualification, with an age cap of 35 and a fee of around AUD 5,750.

Post-study work rights, not term-time earnings, are the financially significant part of studying in Australia.

Official sources

Rules, fees and processing times change. Check the current details on the official pages below before you decide.

• Student visa (subclass 500), Department of Home Affairs