Hiring an air conditioning technician in Australia

What the role really costs to employ, what the market is paying, and which licences actually gate it. Written for the employer doing the hiring.

This page is about taking an air conditioning technician onto your payroll, not about booking one for a job. An air conditioning technician on the award floor of $32.19 an hour costs about $73,535.03 a year once superannuation, leave loading and workers compensation are counted, against a wage of $63,607.44. That is roughly 15.6 per cent on top.

What it actually costs you

The wage is the smallest honest answer. Worked at the award floor, full time, 38 hours a week:

Award floor from the Fair Work P.A.C.T summary for the Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award, or the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award (MA000025), effective 1 July 2026. Superannuation 12 per cent for 2026-27, ATO. Leave loading 17.5 per cent of four weeks, Fair Work Ombudsman. Workers compensation 1.85 per cent, ReturnToWorkSA scheme average, which varies by state and industry so use your own insurer's rate. Payroll tax is excluded because most employers sit below the threshold. Checked 5 August 2026. Full method on what an employee really costs.

That is the floor, not the offer. The market band above is what the role is actually advertised at, and an offer pitched near the legal minimum is the one experienced people scroll past. The full rate detail for this role has the classification ladder.

What gates this role

This is the two licence role, and it is the single most useful thing to understand about hiring it. Refrigerant handling requires an ARCtick licence issued by the Australian Refrigeration Council, and it is a federal scheme, so it does not change when the person crosses a state border. On top of that, most commercial air conditioning work also needs a state electrical licence, because the equipment is wired. A technician holding one licence and not the other can do part of the job and not the rest. A restricted electrical licence covering disconnect and reconnect is a common middle ground and is not the same as a full electrical licence.

Which rung you are actually hiring on

Which award applies is the real question on this role, and it turns on the licence held and the work actually performed rather than on the words in the job title. Where the work sits on the electrical side, the electrical award applies and the ladder above is the relevant one. Where it is refrigeration and mechanical services plumbing, the plumbing award can apply instead.

Electrical, Electronic and Communications Contracting Award, or the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award (MA000025), adult full-time minimums effective 1 July 2026, from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guides. Casual loading of 25 per cent sits on top. Which classification applies is decided by the work actually performed, not by the job title.

Roles that overlap with this one

Widening or narrowing the brief by one role often does more for a stalled vacancy than raising the rate. The nearest neighbours:

• Electrician: the same award and the same floor, and an electrical licence covers part of this work
• Plumber: the mechanical services plumbing lane, where the plumbing award applies instead

Why the good ones are hard to reach

The two licence requirement narrows the pool twice over. Every additional authorisation an employer asks for removes people who are otherwise perfectly capable, which is why the specification matters more on this role than on almost any other trade.

What employers get wrong hiring this role

Advertising for an HVAC technician without stating whether both the ARCtick and the electrical licence are required. It either halves the number of people who apply or brings in people whose licences do not cover the work, and the employer usually cannot tell which until the interviews. The second is assuming domestic split system experience transfers to commercial chillers, or the reverse. The third is treating ARCtick as optional because the last person never mentioned it.

How we fill it

Four checks before a name reaches you: licences verified, screened against your brief, history checked, rate locked. If one step fails, the name never reaches you. The whole process is written out here, including where reference checks actually sit.

You pay nothing until your hire starts, and if they leave inside the first 90 days we replace them free.

Questions