Working for many years with a part-time contract will certainly have repercussions on your pension. It’s not theworking hours to impact, the more so salary received: since it is a “partial” remuneration as it is proportionate on the basis of the daily working hours, it is usually very low amounts with all the consequences of the case.
Not only that, in fact, there is a risk of having a pension with an amount even lower than the minimum, especially when calculated with the contributory rules alone: there are circumstances in which the low salary received precludes the possibility of accessing the pension.
This because a year of work does not always correspond exactly to a year of contributions: this applies only in those cases in which the annual salary received is at least equal to the minimum threshold set by law. Otherwise it could happen that for a year of work 8 or 10 months of contributions are recognized, with the result that at the end of one’s career one could not be reached the minimum requirement for access to the pension.
How pension contributions are calculated
As anticipated, the problem for those who work part-time is that the salary received may not be sufficient for a job full credit of social security contributions.
As much for horizontal, vertical or mixed part-time work, in fact, as obviously also applies to those who work full-time but in this case it is rare that this requirement is not met, so that the period worked can be recognized in full to the In order to achieve the right to a pension it is necessary to have reached the expected annual minimum.
In detail, the rule provides that in order for there to be recognition of a full weekly contribution it is necessary that the weekly salary received is at least equal to 40% of the minimum (monthly) pension in force.
In this regard, this year the minimum pension is equal to 598.61 euros: which means that for the recognition of a contributory week it is necessary to receive one weekly salary of at least 239.44 euros gross.
Just do some quick calculations to find out what it’s about 950 euros gross monthly salary, a figure that is not easy to reach with a part-time contract especially when we are talking about a few hours a day.
It is therefore necessary to understand how many contributions are recognized to those who earn a salary lower than 950 euros. Just make a proportion, using the following formula:
(Weekly salary received * 52)/239.44 euros
Let’s take the case of a worker who gets a salary of 500 euros a month, so approximately 125 euros per week. The calculation will be as follows:
(125*52)/239.44
The result is that for a year of work with these methods they are only recognized 27 contributory weeks (instead of 52); under these conditions, therefore, to have 1 year of contributions you have to work just under 2 years.
For example, let’s think that part-time work will continue for 15 years: there will not be 780 weeks of contributions paid, but 405. So just under 8 years of contributions.
To reach the 20 years required for the old-age pension you will have to work for at least another 23 yearsunless in the meantime there is an increase in working hours and consequently also in salary, thus exceeding the minimum salary threshold for the recognition of a full year of contributions.
Pay attention to the amount of the pension
Another non-negligible problem is represented by the amount of the pension which, as anticipated, risks being very low for those who have often worked part-time hours receiving a reduced salary, especially for those who have started working after 1996 they have their pension calculated entirely with contributions.
Let’s take the above example again and consider that at the age of 67 this has matured 20 years of contributions (but despite 38 years of work). Annually he received a salary of 6,500 eurosthus setting aside 2,145 euros of contributions (33% of taxable salary).
For 38 years, therefore, he put aside little more than 81 thousand euros in contributions (also because the annual revaluation must be considered) which are transformed into a pension by applying a specific coefficient. If it were the current one, equal to 5.723%, it would result in a gross pension of 4,635.63 euros a year, just 356.58 euros per month. And considering that it is calculated entirely with the contributory system, he would not even be entitled to the relevant integration.
