Part-Time Pension Calculation

A full-time member is normally expected to earn one year of service per calendar year.

A part-time employee will earn less service based on what percentage of full-time hours he or she works. You might even work in multiple positions, or for more than one LAPP employer, but you can't earn more than one year of service per year.

If you work part‐time for a LAPP employer, your service and salary are still the basis of your pension formula, but you will not build up your pensionable service as fast as if you worked full-time.

How to Calculate Pensionable Service as a Part-Time Employee

Pension Calculation Example for a Member Who Works Part-Time

Service
For this example, Nancy works part-time at a hospital and her hours worked are half as many hours (sometimes called a 0.5 position) as someone who works full-time. That means she works 50% of what a full-time employee would, so over 25 years she will earn 12.5 years of pensionable service.

Salary
For this example, Nancy's highest average salary in a part-time (0.5) position is $32,000. The pension calculation is based on what her salary would be if she worked full-time. So, if Nancy had worked full-time over the same period, her average salary would have been twice as much: $64,000 per year. We use this figure when calculating her pension, and not her actual salary. This is what we call her annualized salary. You can see an example of how this is calculated below.

I work part-time or casual and would like more information on how this affects my pension.