Part-Time?

It's possible to work part-time and still be a member of PSPP, but it does impact your pension calculation. In the Plan, part-time is defined as working less than 30 hours per week.

A part-time employee is eligible to join the Plan if they:

are a permanent employee;
are working at least 14 hours per week, or 728 hours per year; and
are eligible according to their employer's policy.

Contribution Calculation

Your PSPP contributions are a percentage of your pensionable salary. The percentage is the same regardless of whether you are a part-time or full-time employee.

How to Calculate Pensionable Service as a Part-Time Employee

Your service and salary are still the basis of PSPP's pension formula when you work part-time, but you will not build up your pensionable service as fast as if you worked full-time. For example, if you work 50% of a full-time position during a calendar year, you'll earn 50% of a year of pensionable service.

If you work in multiple positions, or for more than one PSPP employer, you may earn service from each position; however, you cannot earn more than one year of cumulative service per year.

Example of a Pension Calculation for Part-Time Employment

Service

For this example, Vicky works part-time at the University of Alberta and works 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, Vicky's average pensionable salary in a part-time (0.5) position is $32,000. The pension calculation is based on her annualized salary, which is what her salary would be if she worked full-time. So, if Vicky had worked full-time over the same period, her average salary would have been twice as much: $64,000 per year. We use the annualized salary when calculating her pension, not her actual part-time salary.