Hiring a New Grad: Six Challenges by Profession

A new graduate health professional costs a clinic between $76,200 and $84,200 a year in wages and super from February 2027, depending on the profession, and about $122,700 to $130,100 by mid-2030 on an assumed 4% annual wage review. The wage is the easy part. Six things, all of them on the clinic's side of the ledger, shape whether the hire works: the rise schedule, the ramp, the margin test, supervision, the dip around month nine, and the classification claim that arrives in year two. They land differently in each profession, partly because the award level differs and partly because the price of the hour does. This article works through the six, then branches by profession.

The short answer

Under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award, a graduate with no prior experience in the profession starts at Level 1, in the first-year band. What differs between professions is the AQF level the award applies. Physiotherapy, exercise physiology and occupational therapy sit at AQF 7. Osteopathy and chiropractic sit at AQF 9. Speech pathology follows the degree the graduate holds: AQF 7, 8 or 9.

The February 2027 figures rest on a rate that is in the award now. The mid-2030 figures add the Commission's published stage rates for 30 June 2027 to 2030, each still to be put into the award by its own determination, the move into the second-to-third-year band on the graduate's first anniversary and into the fourth-to-sixth-year band on the third, plus a 4% annual wage review that is our assumption, not a determination. Every figure after June 2027 is a projection.

Each profession has its own dated table on its own page: physiotherapist, exercise physiologist, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, osteopath, chiropractor. This page is about what happens around the number.

Challenge 1: the first rise arrives before the first anniversary

Owners read a starting wage as a twelve-month number. It is not. A graduate who starts in February 2027 gets their first rise in the first full pay period starting on or after 30 June 2027, when the award's second stage takes effect. The annual wage review stacks on top from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. In most payrolls that is the same pay run. On a 4% review, the two together are about 9% on the offer wage, five months in.

Then the experience band moves. Level 1 pay is set by the AQF level the award applies and by years of experience in the profession, in four bands: first year, second to third, fourth to sixth, seventh and beyond. On the first anniversary the graduate moves into the second band. On our assumptions an AQF 7 graduate is about 17% above their starting rate by month 12, and about 50% above it by month 36, with no promotion and no negotiation.

This is where an above-award offer goes wrong. An offer is a fixed number. The award floor is a moving one.

These dates are ours, on the 4% assumption. A $75,000 base offer to an AQF 7 graduate is about 10% above the award on day one, under 1% above it after the July 2027 review, and below it at month 12. From then on the clinic is paying the award, and the award is rising. Write the offer with the June and July rises already in it.

Challenge 2: the diary is empty on day one

A graduate's wage runs from the first Monday. Their billings do not. The gap between the two is a cost the rest of the clinic carries, and it is larger than the wage alone because every unbilled hour also leaves rent, admin and software unpaid.

Our planning assumption is a 13-week ramp: the graduate reaches break-even billings in week 13, rising in a straight line from a quarter of that in week one. On that ramp, for an AQF 7 graduate starting in February 2027 at a $100 private consult, billings pass the wage in week four, and the clinic carries about $16,900 of overhead and margin the graduate has not yet produced. A 26-week ramp roughly doubles that to about $33,800. A 52-week ramp, which is what a hire that has not built looks like, carries about $67,600. Those are illustrations on our stated assumptions.

The start date changes the shape. A February starter finishes the ramp in early May and then meets the June and July rises eight weeks later. A November starter runs the ramp through the Christmas shutdown, when the wage runs and the billings stop.

On our model, at a given flow of new patients, the lever that changes the ramp most is how many visits each patient completes. At break-even, a graduate at a $100 fee needs about 35 consults a week. How many new patients that takes depends entirely on how many visits each patient completes.

A graduate who holds patients to the fourth appointment needs half the new patients of one who loses them after the second. Those are two of the most useful things to measure in the first ninety days: the gap between the first and second appointment, and the share of new patients who reach the fourth. Our approach is a weekly one-to-one with the graduate for the first six months, looking at exactly those two numbers.

Challenge 3: covering their wage is not the bar

Many of the owners we work with set the pass mark for a new hire at "they cover their own wage". That is a cashflow test. It answers one question: can the clinic make payroll on this person. It says nothing about whether the hire is worth having.

A clinician who bills exactly what they cost has paid for themselves and nothing else. No rent, no reception, no software, no owner return. Our planning rule is that a clinician's billings need to reach about twice their wages and super before the role is carrying its share, which is the same thing as saying wages and super should sit under about half of billings. Under 45% is the standard we plan to.

For an AQF 7 graduate starting in February 2027, that puts the billings obligation at about $152,000 to $169,000 in the first year, before the first July. By the third anniversary, on our projection, it is about $228,000 to $254,000. The number owners negotiate is $76,200. The number the clinic has to build around is the second one.

Per billable hour, on 44 revenue-generating weeks of 25 billable hours each:

The wage figures are costed on the full 52-week year, because paid leave is still paid. The hourly figures assume the graduate is in front of patients for 1,100 hours a year. If your graduates bill fewer hours than that, the hourly figure goes up. The New Graduate Cost Calculator runs this for AQF 7 and AQF 9 on your own fee and hours; the New Grad Progression Calculator runs the AQF 7 path forward year by year.

Challenge 4: supervision is a cost line, not a favour

Someone has to supervise the graduate, and that someone is usually the clinic's most productive clinician or the owner. An hour a week from a Level 2.1 clinician, costed at the award's 1 October 2026 rate with super across 44 weeks, is about $2,500 a year in wages and super before the billings that hour would have produced. Two hours a week of the owner's time is the same arithmetic at the owner's rate, and two hours a week is our planning figure for the first ninety days.

None of this sits in the wage figure. Neither does annual leave loading, about 1.35% of base, workers compensation premium, payroll tax where the wages bill crosses the state threshold, the vehicle allowance of at least $1.01 a kilometre where the employee is required to use their own car, or registration, insurance and professional development where the contract pays them. A clinic model built on the wage figure alone is built short.

One payroll point to settle before the contract is written: for health professional employees, the award's annualised wage arrangement in clause 22 is available at Levels 2 to 4 only. A new Level 1 employee cannot be put on one. An above-award salary for a graduate is a contract matter and needs its own advice.

Challenge 5: the dip around month nine

This one is not written in any award and it is not a statistic. It is what we see across the clinics we work with, and a pattern we plan around.

Think of a graduate's caseload as traffic lights. Green patients come in with something simple, get better, and leave. Yellow patients are the bulk of what a clinic sees: conditions where experience and the right intervention make or break the outcome, and where progress is slow enough that a graduate may not see it. Red patients are complex enough that it matters little who they see.

Over the first year the green patients pass through and are forgotten. The yellow patients stay. By around month nine the graduate's diary is weighted toward yellow, slow cases can read as a verdict on their own ability, and confidence drops. A graduate who doubts themselves rebooks less. A graduate who rebooks less has an emptier diary. An emptier diary confirms the doubt. The loop closes on itself, and the billings that were supposed to pay for the second-year rise may not arrive.

The owner's job at that point is not only more teaching. It is to turn the graduate around to face what they have already climbed: the same patient type in February and now, in writing. Our approach is to make that comparison a standing part of the one-to-one from month six, before the dip, not after it.

Challenge 6: the classification claim in year two

From 1 October 2026 a graduate is Level 1 by the AQF level the award applies and by years of experience in the profession. For a health professional, Level 2 is not a tenure badge. It is a role test: the award names four roles at Level 2, Senior Clinician, Specialist, Supervisor and Educator, and an employee qualifies by performing one of them, not by accumulating years or a weekend course.

Three things make this a graduate problem rather than a senior one.

First, experience is portable. A graduate who worked anywhere in the profession before starting with you is not in their first year for as long as you think, and the band moves on their clock, not your anniversary.

Second, the title you give them is evidence. Clinics that price by years in practice, and put "senior" on a clinician's title at year three or five to justify the tier, have written the employee's Level 2 argument for them. The Senior Clinician role covers a clinician who works in a clinical area requiring depth of experience, or who provides clinical guidance and direction to less experienced employees as needed. Mentoring on its own does not obviously meet the Supervisor role, which the award frames as being required to provide supervision on a day-to-day basis. Clinical guidance to less experienced staff is, though, one of the two ways the award describes the Senior Clinician role, so it is evidence toward that role, and the more regular and required it is, the stronger the evidence. A clinician three years out who is "mentoring the new grad" because the owner asked them to may be building that case week by week.

Third, the claim comes from the person you least expect. Owners replace a departing senior with a graduate, spend three years building them, and then hear in year two that the graduate considers themselves a senior. The conversation goes badly when it is answered commercially. Whether someone is Level 2 is decided by what the person actually does, matched against the four roles. Whether the clinic can afford a Level 2 wage is a separate conversation about fee, niche and utilisation, and it has to be held separately. Asking about pay classification is a workplace right under the Fair Work Act, so a performance process that starts, or steps up, because someone raised their classification is a risk in its own right. Keep reviews on their existing schedule.

The role test is set out clause by clause in Is this clinician a Level 2?

By profession: where each one bites

The wage curve slopes up with every band, in every profession. On a fixed-price funder, the price of the hour does not move because the clinician is more experienced. The award prices seniority; the scheme does not. A private book can. Which of the six challenges bites hardest depends on where each profession's prices are set.

The Medicare figure is the 85% benefit on a service of at least 20 minutes, to a maximum of five services a year shared across all allied health items. It is a floor on duration, not an hourly rate, and it must never be multiplied up to one. Workers compensation and motor accident fees are set state by state and are not shown.

Physiotherapy

The award applies AQF 7 to every physiotherapy graduate, including one with a Doctor of Physiotherapy, which is an AQF 9 qualification. The NDIS physiotherapy hour was cut from $193.99 to $183.99 in July 2025 and held there. DVA pays $77.10 a consultation today, with $110 announced from July 2027. The private market is where physiotherapy can price experience: the Australian Physiotherapy Association's sustainable hourly rate guidance, indexed in August 2026, puts a standard hour at $273, and it is guidance, not a fee. The graduate's challenge is the private diary. Rebooking and the fourth-visit rate decide the ramp, and Saturday ordinary hours inside the physiotherapy span cost 150% of the weekday rate. Full table: What does a new grad physio cost a clinic?

Exercise physiology

Same award level as physiotherapy, same wage, same dates. The difference is the price of the hour. The NDIS exercise physiology limit is $161.99, cut again in July 2026, which is $22 an hour less than physiotherapy for an identical wage floor. On a fixed-price funder, that means an exercise physiology graduate has to bill more hours than a physiotherapy graduate to reach the same wage ratio, every week. The challenge here is utilisation: the margin test is harder to pass on NDIS work alone, and group items and private fees are where the hour gets recovered. Full table: What does a new grad exercise physiologist cost a clinic?

Occupational therapy

AQF 7 applies even to a graduate with a master's. The NDIS occupational therapy hour is $193.99 and has been since 2019, the highest limit in this series, and report writing and half-rate travel are claimable. The challenge is the shape of the diary rather than the price of the hour: in community and NDIS-funded roles, an occupational therapy graduate's week carries more non-face-to-face work and more travel than a clinic-based profession, and the ramp has to be measured in billable hours, not patients seen. Full table: What does a new grad occupational therapist cost a clinic?

Speech pathology

The one profession in this series where the award level follows the degree. A bachelor graduate is AQF 7, an honours graduate AQF 8, a master's graduate AQF 9. The same job, the same caseload and the same $193.99 NDIS hour sit on three different wage floors, and in February 2027 the master's graduate costs about $7,900 a year more than the bachelor graduate for the same billable hour. DVA prices speech pathology by the hour, at $128.80. The challenge is paying the right floor from day one, because the qualification held decides it, and then building a diary that earns the higher floor where one applies. Full table: What does a new grad speech pathologist cost a clinic?

Osteopathy

The award applies AQF 9 to every new osteopath, including graduates who hold a double bachelor. That is the highest starting floor in this series, $84,200 with super, on the same Medicare rebate as physiotherapy, the same workers compensation consultation maxima as physiotherapy in New South Wales, and with no NDIS item at all. The challenge is a higher floor with no scheme premium, which puts the whole weight on the private fee and the diary. Osteopathy also carries the classification trap in a sharp form: clinics that run a tiered fee by years in practice and call the upper tier "senior" have put the Level 2 argument in writing. Full table: What does a new grad osteopath cost a clinic?

Chiropractic

As for osteopathy: AQF 9 for every new chiropractor, including graduates of bachelor-only programs that are still enrolling, $84,200 with super from February 2027, no NDIS item, and in New South Wales the same Medicare and workers compensation prices as physiotherapy on a higher floor. The challenge is the same one, and so is the answer: the private fee and the fourth-visit rate are the levers that carry most of the weight. Full table: What does a new grad chiropractor cost a clinic?

What to do before the offer

Six challenges, one preparation. Most of it is reading data the clinic already has.

• Read the diary by hour of the week. Booked divided by available, per clinician, over the last eight to twelve weeks. A graduate's caseload comes more readily from the hours the clinic turns away than from the hours that are already full.
• Keep an unmet-demand log at reception for four weeks. Every enquiry not booked inside the patient's window, with the time they asked for and the thing they asked for. A clinical interest nobody on the team has, a language, a time slot. That log is the job ad. It describes a service to add, not a person to hire. Write the role around the service, the hours and the caseload, and pick the best person who applies.
• Write the offer with the rises in it. The 30 June stage, the 1 July review, the first-anniversary band. If the offer is above the award, know the month it stops being.
• Set the ramp before day one. A weekly one-to-one for the first six months, two numbers on the table: the gap between first and second appointment, and the share of new patients reaching the fourth.
• Decide the fee now. On a fixed-price funder the hour is set for you. On the private book it is not, and a graduate's margin test is passed or failed on that number.
• Cost the supervision. Name who does it, how many hours, and what those hours would otherwise bill.
• Run the numbers on your own fee and hours, not ours: New Graduate Cost Calculator and New Grad Progression Calculator.

The team you already have

A new graduate is the clean case: one qualification, one start date, one clock. Everyone already on the payroll under this award is the opposite. From 1 October 2026 each award-covered employee's minimum is the higher of two numbers: the minimum for the classification they translate into, or the minimum their previous classification carried on 30 September. Working that out for a whole team, and showing the reasoning, is a different job from costing a hire. The Health Professionals Award hub holds the dated changes and every source; How exposed is your clinic to the 2026 award changes? is the margin question for the whole team.

Questions owners ask

When does a new graduate get their first pay rise?

Not on their anniversary. The award's second stage takes effect from the first full pay period starting on or after 30 June 2027, and the annual wage review stacks on from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. For a February 2027 starter that is about five months in, and on a 4% review the two rises together are about 9% on the offer wage. The experience band then moves on the first anniversary.

Is a graduate who covers their own wage a good hire?

Not yet. Covering the wage is a cashflow test. Our planning rule is that billings need to reach about twice wages and super before the role is carrying its share of rent, admin and owner return. For an AQF 7 graduate starting in February 2027 that is roughly $152,000 to $169,000 of billings in the first year.

How long should a new graduate take to get busy?

Our planning assumption is 13 weeks to break-even billings. On that ramp, billings pass the wage in about week four. The two numbers we watch for whether the ramp holds are the gap between the first and second appointment and the share of new patients who reach the fourth. A ramp that runs past six months is a signal to look at the clinic's own systems as well as the graduate: demand, booking, rebooking and supervision.

Can a new graduate be a Level 2?

A graduate with no prior experience in the profession starts at Level 1. Moving to Level 2 is a role test, not a years test: an employee qualifies by performing one of the four roles the award names at Level 2: Senior Clinician, Specialist, Supervisor or Educator. A graduate who is given "senior" in their title, or asked to guide less experienced staff as a regular part of the job, is accumulating evidence for the Senior Clinician role whether or not anyone intends it.

Does a graduate's experience at another clinic count?

Yes. Level 1 experience bands count years of experience in the profession, not years with the employer. A graduate who has worked elsewhere in the profession moves into the second-year band on their own clock.

Can I put a new graduate on an annualised salary?

For health professional employees, the award's annualised wage arrangement, clause 22, is available at Levels 2 to 4 only. A new Level 1 employee is paid under the award's ordinary provisions. An above-award salary for a graduate is a contract question and needs its own advice.

Which profession's graduate is hardest to make work?

On price, exercise physiology: the same wage as physiotherapy on an NDIS hour $22 cheaper. On the floor, osteopathy and chiropractic: $84,200 from day one with no scheme that pays more for it. On the pathway, speech pathology: three possible floors for the same job, decided by the degree held.

Related reading

• What does a new grad physio cost a clinic?: the dated table and the billings, for physiotherapy.
• The same model for each profession: exercise physiologist, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, osteopath, chiropractor.
• AQF levels by profession under the Health Professionals Award: which level each profession starts at.
• Is this clinician a Level 2? The Senior Clinician role test: the four roles, clause by clause.
• How to know if you're actually ready to hire your first clinician and the #1 hiring mistake private practice owners make.
• Fixing your physio rebooking rate: the second-session mechanics behind the ramp.
• Why new graduate physiotherapy wages aren't the real problem and New graduate physio salaries in Australia.
• The Health Professionals Award hub: the key dates, the rates and every source in one place.

Sources

• Fair Work Commission, determination PR814029, made 7 September 2026 with [2026] FWCFB 231, operative 1 October 2026: Level 1 rates at cl 17.1, printed inclusive of the 2026 Annual Wage Review; Schedule A.2.1 (Level 1 experience bands) and A.2.2 (the four Level 2 roles); Schedule B (qualification levels by profession); cl J.4.3(b) (existing employees).
• [2026] FWCFB 216 (14 August 2026), Appendix: the staged Level 1 rates for 30 June 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030. [2026] FWCFB 123 (26 May 2026): the five-stage phase-in and the finding that experience is experience in the profession, not with a particular employer.
• Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020, MA000027, consolidated to 1 October 2026: cl 13.2 (span of ordinary hours), cl 22 (annualised wage arrangements), cl 23.3(h) (vehicle allowance), cl 26.1 (Saturday rates), cl 27.3 (annual leave loading).
• Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), ss 340 to 342 (adverse action) and s 341(1)(c) (workplace rights).
• NDIA, NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27, effective 24 September 2026: therapy hourly limits by discipline; the 2024-25 and 2025-26 annual pricing reviews for the earlier physiotherapy and exercise physiology limits.
• State Insurance Regulatory Authority (NSW), Physiotherapy, Chiropractic and Osteopathy Fees Order 2026: workers compensation consultation maxima, New South Wales only.
• Department of Health, MBS items 10953, 10958, 10960, 10964, 10966 and 10970, 1 July 2026: schedule fee $74.55, benefit $63.40.
• Department of Veterans' Affairs, allied health fee schedules effective 1 July 2026, and the 2026-27 Budget announcement of revised allied health fees from 1 July 2027.
• Australian Physiotherapy Association, Sustainable Hourly Rate Guidance, indexed August 2026.

About this information

This article is a planning model for hiring a graduate. It assumes the award covers the employment and that no enterprise agreement applies. The wage figures after June 2027 depend on an assumed 4% annual wage review and on stage rates the Commission has published but not yet put into the award. The ramp, the billings ratios, the 44-week year and the 13-week ramp are our planning assumptions, stated so you can change them. Nothing here assesses any individual employee's classification or entitlements, and nothing in it is legal advice.