If you have experienced periods of unemployment during your professional life, rest assured, the period of time you have been unemployed is in principle taken into account for your retirement. One downside, however, is that your periods of unemployment count differently depending on the years during which you were out of work and whether or not you received compensation. Explanations.
All periods of unemployment benefit that you may have experienced between 1980 and today are taken into account for your basic pension. That is to say the times when you received one of these allowances:the return-to-work assistance allowance (ARE); a solidarity allowance such as the specific solidarity allowance (ASS), the pension-equivalent allowance (AER) or the temporary waiting allowance (Ata); the special allowance from the National Employment Fund (AS-FNE); allowance for the elderly unemployed (Aca); the conversion allowance within the framework of a conversion leave; professional security allowance (ASP); or an allowance paid as part of a redeployment leave.
These periods of compensated unemployment count as quarters of pension insurance under the general social security system. Thus, a period of 50 days of registration with Pôle emploi is worth a quarter of pension insurance. However, the number of quarters thus deducted for your retirement must not exceed 4 quarters per year.
On the other hand, these periods of unemployment do not allow you to contribute to your retirement, that is to say that no sum is reported on your career statement.
Unemployed people do not have to take any specific steps to be able to benefit from these quarters valid for retirement. Pôle emploi sends your information directly to the National Old Age Insurance Fund (Cnav).
Note:in terms of retirement, this same rule applied to periods of unemployment before 1980, whether or not the unemployment was compensated.
In terms of supplementary pensions in the private sector, the Agirc-Arrco scheme grants pension rights for periods of compensated unemployment on condition that you receive one of these allowances:ARE, ASP, ASS, AS-FNE, or compensation for conversion leave. Supplementary pension contributions corresponding to 3% of the daily reference salary are deducted from unemployment benefits.
For the unemployed who do not receive benefits, the taking into account of their periods of unemployment for their basic pension meets slightly different conditions. Two scenarios must be distinguished.
Logically, all periods of compensated unemployment are taken into account and are considered as quarters of pension insurance under the general social security scheme:50 days of unemployment equals one quarter of insurance, within the limit of 4 quarters per year.
From the moment an unemployed person has liquidated his rights to compensation, and therefore no longer receives benefits, his subsequent periods of unemployment are taken into account for his retirement, but only within the limit of one year. This period is extended to 5 years if the person concerned has at least 20 years of pension contributions for all compulsory basic schemes combined, if they are at least 55 years old on the date of the end of their unemployment benefit and if they do not again not covered by a compulsory basic old-age insurance scheme.
In the case of an unemployed person who has never been compensated as a jobseeker, the rules for taking into account his periods of unemployment for retirement differ according to the date on which he was unemployed.
If he was unemployed before 2011, and provided he did not receive unemployment benefit before, the very first period without benefit (continuous or not and of a maximum of one year) as a jobseeker counts for his retirement. In this case, 50 days of unemployment are considered as one quarter of pension insurance, within the limit of 4 quarters per year.
For a period of unemployment without compensation from 2011, the rule is almost the same as before this date except that this first period is taken into account within the limit of a year and a half, i.e. 6 quarters.
