There is no weekly hour limit on a 417 or 462 visa. You can work full time, take overtime and hold several jobs at once.
Why do people think there is an hour limit?
Because student visas have one and the two get conflated. A student visa caps fortnightly hours during study periods; a working holiday visa has no equivalent, and the Department of Home Affairs sets no weekly maximum.
What limits your hours in practice is your award and your body. Awards set maximum ordinary hours and required breaks, and hours beyond them attract overtime or penalty rates: a right, not a restriction.
What is condition 8547?
It limits you to six months of work with any one employer, counted in calendar months from your start date rather than by hours worked. It applies to every working holiday visa holder, it is mandatory rather than advisory, and it resets when a new working holiday visa is granted.
Breaching it is a visa matter, not a tax matter, and the consequence can be cancellation. It is the one rule here worth being careful about, particularly for anyone who found a good job in their second month and stayed.
Which work is exempt from the six month limit?
A long list covering most of what working holiday makers actually do, which is why the six month rule binds far fewer people than expect it to. In these sectors you can work beyond six months with the same employer without seeking permission.
- Plant and animal cultivation, meaning agriculture and horticulture
- Fishing and pearling
- Tree farming and felling
- Mining
- Construction
- Tourism and hospitality, in any location
- Health, aged care and disability care
- Childcare
- Food processing
- Natural disaster recovery
Different locations of the same employer count separately, so long as no single location exceeds six months. A hospitality group moving you from a Melbourne venue to a Byron Bay one is a different position from a year in the same kitchen.
What if your work is not exempt?
You can ask the Department of Home Affairs for written permission to continue, before the six months elapses. Permission is discretionary and not guaranteed, so it is not something to plan a job around.
The practical alternative is to change employers. For most working holiday makers the six month rule is a reason to move on they were going to have anyway.
How does the 88 day rule fit in?
It does not, and confusing the two is common. Condition 8547 is about how long you can stay with one employer. The specified work requirement is about qualifying for a second visa, and it needs 88 days of specified work in an eligible area during your first visa. A third visa requires six months of specified work during the second.
Many specified work industries are also exempt from the six month rule, which is why a season in the Riverland or the Bundaberg region can run past six months and still count. Separate rules that happen to overlap.
What do long hours do to your tax?
They move you up the working holiday maker scale. The rate is 15% up to $45,000 and 30% on the portion above it. Two jobs at once reach that point faster than most people expect, because neither employer's payroll knows about the other.
That is the most common year end surprise for high earning backpackers: each employer withholds correctly on its own figures, and the combined income crosses a threshold neither can see. Superannuation follows earnings rather than hours, at 12% on top of your wages with no minimum monthly earnings requirement since 2022, so more hours means more super as well as more tax.
Does the six month rule bind you?
There is no hour limit for anyone. What varies is whether the six month rule binds you and what your combined income does to your rate.
- Whether your industry is on the exempt list, which decides whether six months is a limit or a formality.
- Whether the same employer moved you between locations, which is treated separately.
- Whether you are chasing 88 days of specified work, which is a different rule with a different purpose.
- How many employers you have at once, since combined income is what crosses the $45,000 point.
- Whether all of them hold your TFN, because a second job at 45% is common and invisible until you check.
- Whether any of the work is under an ABN, where nothing is withheld and the tax lands at assessment.
Multiple employers all reconcile in one working holiday tax return, and you can estimate your tax refund across your combined income rather than job by job.