The rate follows the host, not the job title

On the 2026/27 recommended rates that ranges from 0.25% of remuneration to 6.56%, on identical wages. So the difference between getting this right and getting it wrong is not a rounding item.

What the Order actually says

The WorkCover WA Industry Classification Order is made under section 253(1) of the Workers Compensation and Injury Management Act 2023. The second edition took effect from and after 4pm on 30 June 2025.

Labour supply is one of only twelve ANZSIC classes the Order varies for Western Australian conditions, and it is one of only two exceptions to the Order's general position that there should be one classification per employer. The other is an employer running different business activities at separate locations.

The Order splits labour supply in two.

Predominantly clerical suppliers are PRC 72120, Labour Supply Services, Predominantly Clerical Staff. Every placed worker goes under that one code.

Everyone else takes, in the Order's own words, "the predominant business activity of the host employer to which workers are supplied". In the Order's class table the classification column for that limb does not carry a number at all. It reads: Host employer's PRC.

And the Order says plainly which of those is the normal case:

This category applies to most labour hire arrangements.

WorkCover WA Industry Classification Order, 2nd edition

The Order's own example, which does the work of a page of explanation

A labourer, project manager, engineer and accountant are supplied to a mineral exploration business. The appropriate industry classification is 10120 (Mineral Exploration) and all of the workers' wages would be assigned to that classification.

WorkCover WA Industry Classification Order, 2nd edition

An accountant is declared at the mineral exploration rate, because that is where the accountant was sent. Occupation does not come into it.

The logic is that lending workers out should not make the risk cheaper than doing the work directly.

Which limb are you in?

One test, at entity level, across the whole insurance period. Are you a predominantly clerical supplier or not?

The Order is explicit that 72120 is conditional: use it "only if the labour hire entity supplies predominantly clerical staff to host employers over the course of the insurance period".

Here is the part nobody will tell you. The Order does not say how "predominantly clerical" is measured. Not by remuneration, not by headcount, not by hours. It does not define "clerical" either.

It does define predominant for a different thing, business activity, as the activity with the largest aggregate remuneration paid to workers over the policy period. Measuring the staff mix the same way is the natural reading and it is the one a declaration can actually be tested against, but it is a reading rather than the Order's words, and we say so rather than presenting it as settled. It matters because sixty clerical casuals on short shifts can be far less payroll than forty trades on a mine site. Headcount and dollars can point opposite ways.

Near the boundary, this is a question for WorkCover WA rather than for anyone's spreadsheet.

What follows, and it is not symmetrical

If you are predominantly clerical: every placed worker goes to 72120, including your non clerical placements. One code.

If you are not: every placed worker takes their host's classification, including your clerical placements. That is the Order's accountant, declared at the exploration rate. As many codes as you have host industries.

You cannot be half in each. A firm that is not predominantly clerical cannot put any placed worker under 72120, not even the receptionists.

Several codes on one policy is the correct answer, not a red flag. The Order's own coding flowchart says remuneration "may need to be declared under more than one PRC". The Guidelines for Labour Hire Employers say that where workers are supplied to hosts in diverse industries there will be multiple PRC codes over the course of the policy period.

But 72120 sitting beside host industry codes for placed workers is a contradiction. 72120 is available only to a predominantly clerical supplier, and a predominantly clerical supplier has no host codes for placed workers. Both cannot be true on one policy.

Two codes people reach for and should not

Your own office staff are a separate matter. A labour hire entity's staff who support the administration of the business and are not supplied to any host employer are classified under PRC 72910, Office Administrative Services. That code sits alongside either limb quite properly. It covers your back office, not your placements.

PRC 72110 is not your code. Employment Placement and Recruitment Services, the Order says, "should not be used by labour hire companies where the predominant activity is supplying workers to a host employer". It is the recruitment code. Placing people on hire is a different thing from finding someone a permanent job.

For the record, on the 2026/27 schedule 72910 is 2.10% and 72110 is 2.21%, both above 72120's 1.77%. Moving out of the clerical code does not automatically save anybody money.

What the spread is actually worth

All figures are the WorkCover WA recommended rates for 2026/27. Rates move between schedules, so a figure without a year attached is a figure that will be wrong within twelve months.

Against clerical labour supply at 1.77%:

Recommended rate, 2026/27Clerical labour supply, 1.77%

Read that both ways. A firm placing into shearing, trades or transport and declaring everything at the clerical rate is under declaring. A firm placing into iron ore, exploration or professional offices and doing the same is over paying. Above ground gold sits at exactly the clerical rate, so there misclassification changes nothing at all.

And never take "mining" as an answer. In the same schedule, mining runs from 0.65% for mineral exploration to 3.37% for coal, and underground gold at 2.05% sits above the clerical rate while iron ore at 1.08% sits well below it. Which commodity, and whether the work is above or below ground, decides the direction. The word on its own tells you nothing.

The host is also not always what it looks like. The classification follows the host's own predominant business activity, not the industry the host's customers are in. A heavy engineering and fabrication contractor doing work for resources clients is not a mining business, and on this schedule that distinction alone can move the answer by more than two percentage points of your whole payroll.

Why nobody could have got this right when the policy was written

For every other kind of business, an underwriter can classify at inception from what the business says it does. Labour hire's non clerical limb is the one case where they cannot.

Your correct code set is your hosts' codes, weighted across the year. Which hosts, and for how long, is not known when the policy incepts. It does not appear on a declaration form, in a broker submission, or anywhere in an underwriting file. It exists only in your placement records, and only after the placements have happened.

So the classification on your policy was assigned on the only information available at the time. In this one class, that information is not enough. Nobody is at fault and nothing in the ordinary annual cycle will surface it.

How the split is actually worked out

Not by hours, and not worker by worker through a timesheet.

The Guidelines for Labour Hire Employers set the method:

If, over an insurance policy period, a worker is placed with two or more host employers in different industries (PRCs), identify each host employer and PRC and apportion the worker's remuneration relative to the period of each placement and period of insurance cover.

Guidelines for Labour Hire Employers, WorkCover WA

So the unit is the placement and the arithmetic is dates. Worth knowing that the Order itself prescribes no apportionment method at all. The word does not appear in it. The date method comes from the Guidelines.

The Guidelines also deal with the case where plans change: if a worker does not take up a placement, or is placed with a different host and a different PRC than was declared, the next declaration is updated to account for it.

The records this rests on

Under the Act, employers must maintain records of the number of workers employed, the appropriate industry classification, and total remuneration paid or payable for each period of insurance, and keep them for not less than seven years.

WorkCover WA publishes a template for evidencing that in labour hire, the Labour Hire Worker Placement Log at Appendix 1 of the Guidelines: worker, host employer, host PRC and description, date commenced, date ended, estimated and actual remuneration, and notes on variations.

Note what is required and what is not. The records are required by the Act. The log is a template the Guidelines say "may assist". Most labour hire businesses keep neither, and without something in that shape the apportionment above cannot be done at all, by you or by anyone reviewing you. Placement records for labour hire employers

What WorkCover WA says goes wrong

This is not a theory anyone here invented. The regulator has published the failure modes. The Guidelines for Labour Hire Employers list, as issues identified with some labour hire employers:

• not declaring or under declaring remuneration, or encountering difficulties with accurately declaring remuneration
• declaring remuneration in an incorrect industry class
• declaring remuneration based on the position description of the worker rather than the correct method of using the classification associated with the host employer
• lack of appropriate records about supply of workers with host employers

The Guidelines also say plainly that there is sometimes confusion and inconsistency in the way labour hire arrangements are classified for premium rating purposes.

That third point is the one this page exists for, and the regulator's own framing treats it as confusion rather than anything worse. That matches what we see.

What we do

Work out which limb you are in, and say on what basis. Determine each host's classification, from the host's own workers compensation classification where you can get it and otherwise from what the host actually does, with the reasoning written down. Apportion your remuneration across those codes by placement dates. Compare that to what was declared, and tell you the size and the direction of the difference.

You get the determination, the arithmetic, and the provision of the Order or the Guidelines each part rests on, in a form you can hand to your broker or your insurer.

Where the answer is that your declarations are already right, that is the answer, and it is worth having in writing.

Fees are fixed, agreed before any work starts, and never a percentage of anything.