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Termination and Severance Pay Calculator

Updated

This calculator estimates the employment standards minimum when an employer ends a job without cause: notice, or pay instead of notice, for your length of service (notice and termination pay by province), plus statutory severance pay for Ontario and federally regulated jobs, the two severance rules the calculator reads (severance pay in Canada). It covers each province and territory and the Canada Labour Code. Ontario’s and Saskatchewan’s guides say the common law can give some employees more than these minimums (common-law reasonable notice).

Termination and severance pay calculator

Choose the law that covers your job (a federally regulated job uses the Canada Labour Code: which law covers your job), then enter your length of service and your regular weekly wages before deductions, without overtime.

Which law covers your job.

Dates narrow the answer where a law counts days or "more than" a length. How the first and last day count: B.C.: A period of consecutive months or years runs forward to and including the date that matches the start date in the month the period ends (the Interpretation Act, as the ESA guide quotes it). Quebec: Uninterrupted service is counted in calendar months; in CNESST's example a worker hired on February 8 and laid off on May 7 is credited with 3 months and is owed one week's notice. The other pages we read don't say.

Count your service with this employer up to the day the job ends.

In Ontario an employee whose job is severed gets statutory severance pay only with 5 or more years with the employer and an employer that either has a global payroll of at least $2.5 million or severed 50 or more employees in a 6-month period because all or part of the business permanently closed. Ontario severance in full

Weeks of termination notice, worked or paid in lieu, count towards the completed years and months.

Service as read
Band in the law's scale
Notice the law requires
Pay instead of notice (if none of the notice is worked)

Statutory severance
Severance pay

Notice pay plus severance (before vacation pay and tax)

The exceptions are on the notice page.

How do you read the result?

The weeks are the notice the law sets for your service, and Ontario, Alberta and the Canada Labour Code let the employer give it as working notice, pay instead, or a mix. The dollar line is what you’d get if none of the notice is worked, and working notice versus pay in lieu explains the choice.

Each law has its own name for that pay: termination pay in Ontario and Alberta, compensation for length of service in B.C., an indemnity in Quebec, and regular wages in lieu of notice under the Canada Labour Code.

Ontario, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan each count a week’s wages their own way when pay varies, and the note under the wage field gives the rule. The calculator uses the weekly figure you enter and doesn’t average it.

The band line shows where your service falls, in the law’s own words. Some laws count service in days or weeks, as Alberta and Saskatchewan do, which is why dates narrow the answer. Where a law’s wording doesn’t settle an exact length, such as B.C.’s “More than 3 months”, the calculator says so under the result instead of claiming an answer.

The severance lines appear for Ontario and federally regulated jobs, the two rules the calculator reads. The total is before tax (tax on severance).

Who gets statutory severance pay?

In Ontario, severance pay is a separate payment from termination pay. In Ontario an employee whose job is severed gets statutory severance pay only with 5 or more years with the employer and an employer that either has a global payroll of at least $2.5 million or severed 50 or more employees in a 6-month period because all or part of the business permanently closed. Ontario severance in full lists the exceptions. With “Don’t know”, the calculator shows the severance figure on its own line, outside the total.

For a federally regulated job: A federally regulated employee gets statutory severance pay under the Canada Labour Code when the employer ends their employment after they have completed 12 consecutive months of continuous employment, unless the employer dismisses them for just cause. The amount is 2 days’ wages for each full year worked or 5 days’ wages, whichever is greater. Federal severance in full has the cases where it isn’t owed.

For the other laws the calculator shows no severance line. Alberta’s page, for one, says “Severance pay is determined under common law and not required under the Employment Standards Code”. What severance can mean covers the rest.

What does the result look like for three workers?

Entering the same figures in the calculator gives the same results.

Ontario

Example. A worker in Ontario is paid instead of working their notice after 7 years and 4 months, at $1,200 a week, and the employer meets Ontario’s payroll condition, a payroll of at least $2.5 million.

  • Notice: the band “7 to less than 8 years” is 7 weeks, so termination pay is $8,400.00.
  • Service for severance: the 7 weeks paid instead of notice count as 1 completed month at the guide’s 4 weeks a month, so the months come to 5.
  • Severance weeks: the 7 years plus those months divided by 12 come to 7.42 weeks, under the cap of 26 weeks.
  • Severance pay: $8,900.00
  • Total: $17,300.00

Ontario’s guide counts notice weeks, worked or paid, toward the years and months used for severance, and its own example treats 8 weeks of pay in lieu as 2 months. In Ontario, partly finished years count by completed months divided by 12, and severance stops at 26 weeks.

Alberta

Example. A worker in Alberta earns $24 an hour for 40 hours a week and has worked there 6 years and 3 months.

  • Weekly wages: $960.00
  • Notice: the band “6 to less than 8 years” is 5 weeks.
  • Termination pay and total: $4,800.00

The calculator shows no Alberta severance line, since Alberta’s page leaves severance to the common law (severance pay in Canada).

Federally regulated

Example. A federally regulated worker’s job is ended without cause after 4 years and 6 months, at $1,500 a week for a 5-day week.

  • Notice: from 3 completed years it is 1 week per completed year, up to 8, so 4 weeks, and pay in lieu is $6,000.00.
  • Severance: the greater of 8 days or 5 days, so 8 days at $300.00 a day: $2,400.00
  • Total: $8,400.00

Why do some severance calculators show much bigger numbers?

This calculator reads the employment standards scales. Calculators that answer in months are estimating common-law reasonable notice instead, which this site doesn’t estimate.

Ontario’s guide puts it this way: “Some employees may have rights under the common law that are greater than the rights to notice of termination (or termination pay) and severance pay under the ESA”. Saskatchewan’s page calls its notice periods legislative minimums and says employees, especially long-term ones, might be entitled to more under common law, which employment standards doesn’t enforce.

What a court weighs is on common-law reasonable notice. In Ontario, an employee can’t both sue for wrongful dismissal and claim termination or severance pay from the ministry for the same job loss; your three options compares the routes.

What does the calculator leave out?

To cross-check an Ontario figure, the Ministry of Labour has its own Termination Pay Calculator, which it says is only for ESA notice and not common-law notice, and a Severance Pay Calculator.

When must it be paid, and what if it isn’t?

The final pay deadlines by province table covers termination pay, and my employer hasn’t paid me covers collecting unpaid final pay. For a payment that doesn’t arrive, see employment standards complaint deadlines.

Sources

The figures and rules on this page come from these sources, last checked against them between October 6, 2026 and October 16, 2026. How we check facts.