Australian employers had to pay $453 million in underpaid wages to more than 181,000 workers in 2025-26.
The Fair Work Ombudsman annual report, released this week, said this was a $95 million increase from the year before.
Over six years, employers have had to find more than $2.5 billion in back pay.
In the past year, large corporations made up $217.3 million of the overall back-payments, paid to over 110,000 workers.
The Fair Work Ombudsman received a record 31,596 anonymous tip-offs last year, an increase of 23 percent.
Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth applauded workplace participants for flagging potential wrongdoing through the anonymous reports.
“Anonymous reports help us identify emerging issues, detect patterns, and target education, engagement and compliance activities where they’re needed most,” Ms Booth said.
“We continue to target the root causes of non-compliance and focus our efforts where they can have the greatest impact.
“Our strategic enforcement model (promotes) long-term behavioural change, improved workplace compliance, and higher-level enforcement if deliberate, serious and systemic issues are found.”
Across a range of sectors, in 2025–26, FWO started 60 litigations and secured $2.3 million in penalties.
The full annual report is here.
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