Youth Allowance Rates Australia 2026

What you actually receive, and where it cuts out

The basic rate above is not the whole payment. Most recipients also get the Energy Supplement, which is a fixed fortnightly amount rather than something that scales with your rate. The right-hand column is the fortnightly income at which the payment reaches nil for a full-time student or Australian Apprentice — it is not a stored figure, it is what the income test below produces once your maximum rate runs out.

All figures are per fortnight. The cut-out points apply to students and Australian Apprentices, who get the higher income free area. A Youth Allowance job seeker is assessed under the ordinary allowance income test and so loses payment at a considerably lower income.

Higher rate after 22 for long-term income support recipients

A separate, higher schedule applies if you are 22 or older and start full-time study or an Australian Apprenticeship after receiving an income support payment for at least 6 of the last 9 months since turning 22 — or if you are studying an approved English course and English is not your first language. It is easy to miss because it is not the rate the calculators default to.

A single principal carer with an exemption from mutual obligation requirements is paid $1,068.20 a fortnight, which is the parenting payment single maximum basic rate including pension supplement. Recipients under 22 assessed as having a partial capacity to work may also receive the Youth Disability Supplement of $162.60 a fortnight.

The personal income test

As a full-time student or Australian Apprentice you keep the first $539.00 of fortnightly income in full. The next slice, up to $646.00, reduces your payment by 50 cents in the dollar. Everything above $646.00 reduces it by 60 cents.

Worked through: on $700.00 of assessable income in a fortnight, the band between $539.00 and $646.00 costs $53.50 ($107.00 × 50%), and the $54.00 above $646.00 costs $32.40. The payment falls by $85.90 that fortnight. This is the Services Australia worked example, reproduced by the calculator on this site.

The free area is why a student living away from home keeps some payment up to $1,697.17 a fortnight even though the maximum rate is only $684.20 — the first $539.00 is ignored entirely and the taper is applied only to what is left.

The student income bank

Fortnights in which you earn under $539.00 are not wasted. The unused portion accrues as income bank credits up to a maximum of $13,500 for a full-time student, and those credits are applied to reduce your assessable income before the test above runs. This is the mechanism that lets a full-time student work a full-time summer job without immediately losing payment: with a full balance, six fortnights at $2,000 draw down $8,766 of credits and the payment is unaffected. Credits accrue automatically — there is nothing to claim.

A full-time Australian Apprentice on Youth Allowance uses a different bank. The Australian Apprentice income bank operates the same way, but the maximum credit that can be saved is $1,000 — and unlike the student maximum it is not indexed each year, so it does not move at the 1 January CPI indexation that lifts the student ceiling and the free area.

The parental income test

If you are assessed as dependent rather than independent, your parents' combined income is tested as well. Nothing is deducted while that combined income is at or below $66,722 a year. Above the threshold your payment falls by 20 cents for every dollar of the excess, which Services Australia applies fortnightly as the annual excess divided by 130.

On combined parental income of $80,000, the excess is $13,278 and the fortnightly reduction is $102.14 — before any of it is shared with siblings, because where more than one dependent child under 22 is in the family pool the reduction is spread across them rather than charged to each in full.

The parental income test does not apply at all if you are independent. It is also set aside where a parent receives certain income support payments, which is why two families on similar incomes can get very different answers.

The assets test — and who it doesn't apply to

Youth Allowance also carries an assets test, but it only touches you once you are assessed as independent. A dependent full-time student or apprentice is not assets-tested at all — the personal assets test does not apply to a dependent recipient, and the old family assets test and family actual means test were removed from the parental means test on 1 January 2016, so your parents' savings, shares and property sit outside the payment entirely. What can still reduce a dependent rate is the parental income test above, the personal income test on your own earnings, and the maintenance income test where a parent receives child support. Independence usually starts automatically at 22, so the assets test mostly matters for older students, apprentices with a qualifying independence pathway, and anyone on the long-term rate.

Where it does apply, it is a hard cut-off rather than a taper: your assessable assets (savings, shares, investment property, a caravan or boat not used as your home, and similar) must sit at or under the relevant limit or the payment is nil, no matter how low your income is. Your principal home is excluded, which is why the limit for a non-homeowner is set higher — it stands in for the home equity a homeowner already has. Youth Allowance shares these limits with JobSeeker Payment and Austudy, and they index on 1 July.

Worked through: an independent single Youth Allowance recipient renting (so tested as a non-homeowner) holds $650,000 in shares, savings and a caravan. That is above the $600,000 non-homeowner limit, so the payment is nil regardless of how the personal income test comes out — the two tests are separate hurdles, and failing either one on its own stops the payment.

Assets below the limit are not entirely ignored, either. Financial assets such as savings and shares are separately deemed to earn income at a set rate, and that deemed income is added into the personal income test above — so a large balance sitting just under the assets limit can still reduce the payment through the income side, even though it clears the assets test itself.

Rent Assistance and the Energy Supplement

Two extra amounts sit alongside the basic rate. The Energy Supplement shown in the tables above is a small, fixed fortnightly top-up that does not scale with your living situation beyond the amount already built into each row, and it is not touched by indexation. Rent Assistance is larger and works differently: if you are independent, or a dependent student approved for the away-from-home rate, and you pay rent above a threshold, Services Australia adds Rent Assistance to your maximum tested amount before the personal or parental income test runs — so a dollar of Rent Assistance is reduced by the same taper as your basic rate, not paid on top of a means-tested figure.

Above the threshold, Rent Assistance pays 75 cents for every dollar of rent, up to the maximum rate for your situation. Worked through: an independent student sharing a rental and paying $300 a fortnight in rent is $142 above the $157.80 sharer threshold; 75% of that is $106.65, which is under the $149.20 sharer maximum, so Rent Assistance of $106.65 a fortnight is added to the tested amount before either income test is applied.

A dependent student living at home does not get Rent Assistance at all, and a dependent student living away from home only qualifies once Services Australia has approved the away-from-home rate — the same approval that unlocks the higher basic rate in the table above. Paying board to parents or living rent-free does not attract Rent Assistance either; the rent paid has to be at a genuine commercial or near-commercial rate.