It’s a statistic that doesn’t make any noise, but which eats into the purchasing power of future retirees: In 2024, 36% of senior female employees were part-timecompared to 15% of male employees, according to figures from Agirc-Arrco. While public debate often focuses on the retirement age, we forget that working time at the end of a career is the slider that can tip a retirement from serenity to precariousness.
Why this gap between women and men? It firstly reflects a societal reality and that of the labor market. From the age of fifty to retirement age, women are often asked to caring for aging parents or possibly compensate for the lack of childcare solutions for their grandchildren. Without forgetting the so-called feminized professions (cleanliness, personal services, mass distribution) for whom part-time work is frequently required, with employers preferring flexibility to the detriment of full-time work, making it difficult to complete a full career.
Two compulsory regimes
If the calculation is more lenient for the basic pension, this is not the case for the supplementary pension, which explains the high price paid by women. For the Cnav, this involves contributing on the basis of a salary equivalent to 150 hours at the minimum wage, which means that a woman working part-time can validate her annual quarters. As for the Agirc-Arrco supplementary pension, it is a diet that works by points that is, you strictly get what you buy. If your salary is halved because of a change to 50%, you accumulate half as many points.
But rather short part-time periods have a slight influence on the amount of the pension: “ Part-time work for two or three years at the end of one’s career generally has no significant impact on the final amount of the pension.warns Alexandre Simon, retirement expert at Origami&Co, a consulting and support firm in preparing for retirement. The calculation formulas and the mass of points accumulated over 40 years smooth these short episodes “. This is from a threshold of 5 years, and depending on the level of remuneration, the shortfall can become significant.
The quantified impact according to income
To see this, let’s compare two typical profiles over a total activity period of 25 years. “ Please note that these calculations are theoretical because they are based on 25 years and include part-time periods 25 yearsspecifies the expert. As a general rule, the calculation is done over 40 years, which means that the years of part-time work can fall outside the average of the best 25 years to calculate the average annual salary on which the general system pension will be based. “.
For an employee working 22 years full-time with €24,000 gross per year who ends her career with 3 years part-time with €12,000 gross. “ The financial impact compared to the same example without part-time is 63 euros by combining the basic pension and the supplementary pensioncalculates Alexandre Simon. For a higher income, namely 15 years full-time with €84,000 per year and 10 years part-time with €42,000, the difference is 609 euros more for a person without part-time “. Due to the supplementary pension which can represent more than 50% of the total executive pension, the higher the income, the more expensive part-time work is in retirement.
Part-time and retirement: what are the solutions?
Within the compulsory system, it is not possible to buy back Agirc-Arrco points to compensate for part-time work, unlike the basic system where you can buy back quarters. To limit breakage, there is a supplementary pension (PER or life insurance) to create a private pension, you still need to have the means. For mothers of three or more children, Point increases (often 10%) can help compensate for some of the points not earned during part-time work, even if this does not replace a full contribution.
