LeBron James salary and the Australian full-time average
LeBron James is one of the highest-paid athletes in the world, but his exact salary is not reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics or any other official Australian source. The ABS publishes detailed earnings data for Australian employees, but it does not cover overseas sports contracts. To understand where his pay sits against the national full-time average, we need to rely on widely reported figures from US media and compare them with Australian benchmarks.
The national full-time average
The ABS Average Weekly Earnings survey for May 2026 shows that full-time adult ordinary-time earnings averaged $2,083.70 per week. Multiplied by 52 weeks, that works out to about $108,352 a year. This is the line that Place a salary on the line uses as its reference point. The full-time median, from the ABS Employee Earnings and Hours survey for August 2025, is lower: $1,740 per week for full-time employees, or about $90,532 a year. The all-employees median is $1,436 per week, roughly $74,100 a year. These medians give a better sense of what a typical worker earns, while the average is pulled higher by very high incomes.
Where does LeBron James sit? Based on typical reports, his NBA salary alone is in the tens of millions of US dollars per year, and his endorsement income adds more. Even after converting to Australian dollars at current exchange rates, his annual earnings are many times the Australian full-time average. He would be in the top 0.1% of Australian income earners.
Tax and take-home pay in Australia
If LeBron James were an Australian resident for tax purposes, his income would be subject to the 2026–27 resident tax rates: nil on the first $18,200, 15% on the next $26,800, 30% on the next $90,000, 37% on the next $55,000, and 45% on everything above $190,000. Plus the Medicare levy of 2% applies to most income. On a multi-million-dollar income, the effective tax rate would be close to 47% on the top portion. Even so, the after-tax amount would still be far above the average Australian full-time worker's gross pay.
How the figures are set
The ABS calculates average weekly earnings from a survey of employers. It is published twice a year, for May and November. The May 2026 release is the latest. The full-time average is a mean, so it is affected by very high salaries like LeBron James's, but because he is not in the Australian labour force, he does not appear in the data. The median is a better measure of the typical worker. The national minimum wage, set by Fair Work from 1 July 2026, is $26.44 per hour, or $1,004.90 per week on a 38-hour week, about $52,255 a year. Award minimums rose by 4.75% at the same time.
State comparisons
Full-time average ordinary-time earnings vary by state. The highest is the ACT at about $119,090 a year, followed by Western Australia at $115,825, New South Wales at $109,658, Victoria at $106,137, Queensland at $106,064, the Northern Territory at $103,173, South Australia at $102,450, and Tasmania at $96,008. Even the highest state average is a fraction of LeBron James's reported income. For more detail, see States and territories.
Job and industry medians
The ABS also publishes median earnings by occupation and industry. For example, Managers have a median hourly earnings of $69.20, Professionals $64.50. The highest median weekly earnings for full-time workers are in Mining and Information Media. LeBron James's occupation as a professional athlete does not have a published median in Australia because the category is too small. But you can explore other occupations at Job medians and Industry medians.
Conclusion
LeBron James's salary is not something the ABS measures, but we can say with confidence that it dwarfs the Australian full-time average of $108,352. Even after Australian tax, his take-home pay would be many times that. For most Australians, the average and median provide a realistic benchmark. To see where your own salary sits on the line, use the tool at Place a salary on the line. For more on how these figures are collected and calculated, see How the figures are set and About this site.