Introduction
Data dictionary for the terminology in the Modern Awards Pay Database. The database shows current and historical minimum rates of pay, allowances and penalty rates in modern awards.
Content
Data field name
| Terminology description |
|---|---|
| allowance | Description of allowance, taken from the summary of monetary allowances table in the award if the award contains one. Otherwise the allowance description is taken from the allowance sheets. |
| allowanceAmount | The ($) value of allowance. |
| allowanceLastAdjusted | Contains the last adjusted value of an expense allowance. |
| allowanceLookupCode | Allowance lookup code – 8 = Group and 10 = detail. |
| awardCode | An 8 digit alphanumeric award publication identification number, eg MA000001. |
| awardFixedID | A unique code for this instance of the modern award resource that remains identical year on year. |
| awardID | A unique identification number for the award. The number changes each year. This field is common across all files and can be used as the primary key across the data, adding name & awardCode for context. |
| awardOperativeFrom | The date when the award came into operation. |
| awardOperativeTo | The date when the award ceased to be in effect (was revoked). |
| basePayRateID | A unique identification number of the base pay rate resource. Values have the prefix (“BR”). |
| baseRate | The rate that the annual wage review increase is directly applied to. In the case of the wage allowance records, the base rate is also known as the standard rate, used to calculate the allowances. |
| baseRateType | The rate frequency such as: weekly, hourly, annual, daily, piece rate, cents per km, engagement rate). |
| calculatedIncludesAllPurpose* | Used to flag whether the base rate includes an allowance that applies for all purposes (1 = True, 2 = False). These rates are often added to a minimum hourly rate form an ordinary hourly rate |
| calculatedPayRateID* | A unique identification number of the calculated pay rate resource. Values have the prefix (“CR”). |
| calculatedRate | A calculated rate of a classification – derived value from base rate via a formula e.g. Hourly rate = Weekly rate/38. |
| calculatedRateType | Calculated rate type (hourly, weekly, annual, daily, fortnightly, casual hourly, cents per km, piece rate, engagement rate). |
| classification | Used to describe a job title that is associated with a rate of pay in a modern award. |
| classificationDisplayOrder | Order in which a classification that is linked to the penalty record appears in the clause. |
| classificationID | A unique identification number of the classification for each year. |
| classificationFixedID | Unique identification number of classification that remains identical year on year. |
| classificationLevel* | A numerical representation of the classification within the hierarchical structure of classifications in a clause. Starts at 1 for the lowest level classification. |
| clauseDescription | Used to describe the content of the clause. |
| clauseDisplayOrder | Numerical value indicating the order the clauses appear in the modern award. |
| clauseFixedID | Unique identification number of clauses that remains identical year on year. |
| clauseID | Unique identification number of clauses. The clause ID changes every year. |
| clauseLink | The clause number that the penalty is linked to for the purposes of calculating penalty rates. |
| clauseLinkDisplayOrder | Order in which classification clause that is linked to the penalty record appears in the Award |
| clauseLookupID | Static look up ID for clause (used by the Commission for document generation). |
| clauses | Clause number as it appears in the award. |
| cpiGroupDescription | Name of the CPI Group or sub-group. |
| cpiQuarterCurrentYear | The quarter in which the cpiValueCurrentYear is based on (March, June, September or December quarter). It is populated in data from 1 June 2025, Prior to 1 June 2025 it was only populated in a year in which different quarters were used to update expense allowances across awards. |
| cpiQuarterLastAdjusted | The quarter in which the CPI of last adjusted year relates to. It will be populated in 2021 for those expense allowances that were adjusted in 2020. |
| cpiSeriesID | CPI series ID as supplied by the ABS. |
| cpiValueCurrentYear | CPI value for the published year. |
| cpiValueLastAdjusted | Value of the CPI when the expense allowance was last adjusted (in the last adjusted year). |
| displayOrder | Numerical value representing the order the record appears in the clause. |
| employeeRateTypeCode* | Employee type: • AD – Adult • JN – Junior • AP – Apprentice • AA – Adult Apprentice • TN – Trainee rates • XT – Exited from traineeship but not an Adult • CA – Cadet |
| expenseAllowanceID | Unique identification number of expense-related allowance which changes every year. |
| expenseAllowanceFixedID | Unique identification number of expense-related allowance remains identical year on year. |
| isAllPurpose | Used to flag whether an allowance applies for all purposes (1 = True, 0 = false). An all-purpose allowance applies to all employees or a specific group of employees and forms part of their ordinary hourly rate. |
| isHeading | States if the record is a heading (0 = No, 1 = Yes). Used by the Commission to flag records which act as headings within a table. |
| lastAdjustedYear | Used for the expense-related allowances. The last year in which the allowance value was increased. |
| lastModifiedDateTime | This is the date and time that the resource was last modified. |
| name | Title of the award. |
| nextDownClassificationFixedID* | Refers to the classificationFixedID for the next logical classification down the classification hierarchy. |
| nextUpClassificationFixedID* | Refers to the classificationFixedID for the next logical classification up the classification hierarchy. |
| operativeFrom | The date when the record comes into operation. For a particular employee, this will only take effect from the beginning of that employee’s first full pay period that starts on or after that date. |
| operativeTo | The date on which the record ceased to be in effect. |
| parentAllowance | Description of parent allowance (often used for a title of a group such as “meal allowances” for a group of breakfast, lunch and dinner allowances). |
| parentClassificationName | Description of a parent classification. Used when there are classifications that belong to a group of classifications, e.g “Technical stream” may be parent of a group containing Levels 1-6. |
| paymentFrequency | Denotes when the payment of an allowance is made, eg – per week, per hour, per meal etc. |
| penaltyCalculatedValue | Calculated value of penalty. |
| penaltyColumnDisplayOrder | Order in which penalty rate column appears in the table in the award |
| penaltyDescription | Penalty description from the relevant clause in the award. |
| penaltyFixedID | Unique identification number of the penalty that remains identical year on year. |
| penaltyRateUnit | Penalty rate unit (percent). |
| penaltyText | In cases where a ($) figure does not apply, the numeric field is replaced with text. |
| publishedYear | The year in which the minimum rates of pay were determined in the annual wage review. For example, for the published year 2019 the rates in the annual wage review were determined on 30 May 2019. It includes all data that came into operation between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020. |
| rate | The percentage that is applied to a base rate (or standard rate) in the wage allowance file or the percentage of the penalty in the penalty file. |
| rateUnit | The rate unit (percent). |
| roundValue | Number of decimal points that the value is rounded to (rounded up or down). Usually 0, 1 or 2 decimal places. |
| type | The type of record, either Detail or Group. Group is used to assign a classification or allowance description as the parent (Group is often used for a title of a group such as “meal allowances” and Detail for individual allowances such as breakfast, lunch and dinner). |
| versionNumber* | This number indicates the version of the resource. It is incremented by one each time the resource is updated. |
| wageAllowanceFixedID | Unique identification number of the wage-related allowance that remains identical year on year. |
* Field is populated from 2021 onwards.