FIFO Rosters

What do the numbers in a FIFO roster mean?

Rosters are written with a colon or a slash and the two numbers are the same unit, so 2:1 is weeks and 8:6 is days. The number of days matters more than the pattern's name: 14:7 and 2:1 are the same roster, and 1:1, 7:7 and 14:14 all give you as many days at home as away.

From the titles and pay lines of the pay snapshot's ads of 12 October 2026. A roster no ad named says so.

Fly in fly out rosters: the swing, the R&R and the two days in between

A swing is one stretch on site, and R&R is the industry's name for your days off. Whether the travel days are taken from your R&R depends on the company. Where they are, a week of R&R on 2:1 is five full days at home with a travel day at each end, unless the ad says the company pays for travel time.

What is the most common FIFO roster in Australia?

Most ads don't name a roster at all. Of 249 FIFO ads that gave a pay figure in October, 34 put a roster in the title or the pay line, and the counts come from those; two of them named two rosters each. Most of the 2:1 ads were for operators and trades, many from agencies such as Fetch and Techforce, and Sodexo's chef ads in Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns wrote it as 14:7.

FIFO roster jobs by trade, from the ad titles

The split runs by trade more than by company. Every operator ad that gave a roster ran 2:1, and one of them, Fetch's for 20 dump truck operators from Perth, offered 2:1 or 2:2. The electricians were split: Techforce, WorkPac and a Port Hedland contractor on 8:6, Sodexo on 2:2 in Brisbane and 2:1 in Townsville. A Karratha plumbing firm offered either 8:6 or 2:1 from Perth, and a camp caterer's plumber was the only 15:13.

So a 2:2 roster FIFO job in WA does come up, and so does an 8:6 for a trade, but you find them by reading titles, not by assuming a company runs one roster. The electrician and operator pages have the ads by job.

Which FIFO roster is best?

The study was done for the WA Mental Health Commission by researchers at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia, and published in December 2018. A third of the FIFO workers in it, 33 per cent, had high or very high psychological distress, against 17 per cent in a comparison group of other workers. People on even-time and shorter rosters, 2:2, 8:6 and 5:2, reported "significantly better outcomes on all mental health and wellbeing measures" than people on 2:1, 3:1 and 4:1, which it said gave "less time for recovery".

Even time on a fly in fly out roster: half the year at home

Even time means as many days off as on. In an online thread asking which roster people liked most, the top answer asked where the three people who'd voted for 2:1 were. One bloke in the same thread went the other way: he wrote that he preferred 3:1 project rosters, and guessed he wasn't in the majority. The study's interviews said R&R has to be long enough to recover and switch off from work.

Which roster leaves the most time at home

After even time, an 8:6 leaves the most time at home: six days in every fourteen, nearly a week each time. A 2:1 puts you home seven days in every twenty-one, fewer if you travel in your own time. The 3:1 and 4:1 turn up on projects, like October's long-term trade assistant job, and the study's interviewees said rosters that long left them stressed and fatigued. The couples and family page has more on life at home around a roster.

How many hours a year is each FIFO roster?

Every rostered day on site worked, twelve hours a day, over 365 days: the pay calculator's sum. The city year is 52 weeks of 38 hours.

Those hours are why the annual figure misleads. A salary divided by 2,920 hours is a smaller number than the same salary divided by 2,190, and a 2:1 worker is paid for a third more hours than an even-time worker in the same job. Put the offer and its roster into the pay calculator and compare the hourly rate with a city job, not the year with a city year; the salary page does it for every job.

What the October ads paid on each roster

Only ads that stated a figure are in the table. Most don't.

Only ads that stated a figure and a roster are in the table. Most don't.

Those two trade assistant ads were for the same kind of work, so the extra money on the longer roster came from more hours, not a higher rate.

What is night shift like on a FIFO roster?

A mine runs all day and all night, so many crews on 2:1 work seven days, then seven nights, with the swing change, the switch from days to nights, as the one short sleep in between.

Cleaners, the maintenance crew and the next shift's utes are all out there at ten in the morning, which is why earplugs and an eye mask are on the packing list. The first day or two of R&R after nights goes on turning the body clock back. If a swing gets dark in a way that sleep doesn't fix, Lifeline is 13 11 14, any hour.

Seeing a year of fly in fly out swings at once

The ad's two numbers are easier to feel on a calendar than in a sentence. Put your roster into the roster calculator and it draws your swings across the year, showing which weekends, birthdays and holidays land on one; a 2:1 has you away for two weekends in three. A printed calendar on the fridge, with the swings coloured in, works too, and the family sees it every day.

Can you choose your FIFO roster?

The site decides which rosters exist, because the roster is how the mine keeps every seat filled all year, with crews rotating through it. What you decide is which ad to answer. An ad that names 8:6 is an 8:6 job, and an ad that names two patterns lets you ask for the shorter one. "I need a roster that lines up with my partner's" is a normal sentence to a recruiter, and the agencies page has the four questions to ask before you accept a placement.

Why the first FIFO roster is often a long one

The entry-level ads in October that named a roster, for trade assistants, ran 2:1 or 3:1, and the 8:6 ads were for trades and site admin. A beginner takes the roster the contract runs, and a shorter one is something to move toward after a year of swings. Plan the move at the start, not after the second year of 2:1.

Which FIFO roster is right for you?

Three honest questions

1. Have you done the hourly sum on the roster you are offered, not just the salary? The pay calculator takes a minute. The year and the hour tell different stories, and the hour is the true one.
2. If you have a partner, have they seen the roster laid over a calendar? Seen, not described: mark the weekends and the birthdays. The calendar is the argument nobody can wave away.
3. What roster will you move to, and when? If the first job is 2:1 because that is what the ad ran, name the year you ask for 8:6 or even time, and the trade or ticket that earns it.