Categories: Retirement Benefits

Credit for Unused Sick Leave

CSRS/CSRS-Offset employees who retire on an immediate annuity or die leaving a widow, widower or former spouse entitled to a survivor annuity will have their service increased by the days of unused sick leave to their credit. The days of unused sick leave that are added are used only in counting the number of years and months of service for annuity computation purposes. The sick leave cannot be used in computing a high-3 average salary or for meeting the minimum length of service for retirement eligibility.


Days are converted to months and years. The conversion formula is rather tricky because sick leave hours are not deemed to represent work days, but rather portions of a 360-day work year that is divided into 12 30-day work months. When the 360 days are divided into the 2,087 hour work year, the product is a 5.797 hour day. Thus, the conversion formula gives a day’s credit for about six hours of sick leave, rather than eight.


To compute the additional credit for sick leave at retirement, add the months and days of sick leave to the months and days of all periods of actual service.


Example:

Actual service: 30 years, 4 months, 16 days

Sick leave at retirement: 4 months, 24 days

Total credit: 30 years, 9 months, 10 days

Only years and full months of service are used in the annuity computation. Leftover days are dropped. In the example above the 10 days would be dropped.

FEDweek Newsletter
Veteran insight on your federal pay, benefits, career and retirement!
Share