Labour Day falls on the first Monday of March in Western Australia and on the second Monday of March in Victoria and Tasmania. New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT do not hold a Labour Day public holiday in March at all, so the long weekend applies only in the three states that observe it on these dates.
Retail, hospitality, healthcare and emergency services rosters regularly schedule staff to work on Sundays as part of standard shift patterns that do not follow the Monday-to-Friday week. 22 March 2026 falls on Sunday, a working day for these shift-based industries even though it sits outside the standard working-day count above.
A public holiday that falls on a Monday or a Friday produces a three-day weekend without using any annual leave, which is why long-weekend planning around 22 March 2026 depends on which day of the week the nearest public holiday falls on. A midweek holiday delivers no such automatic extension, though many workers bridge it with a single day of leave.
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