Canadian · Ontario employment standards
Severance pay calculator.
Work out what Ontario’s Employment Standards Act requires when your employment ends: notice or termination pay, statutory severance pay, and vacation pay. Then see where common-law reasonable notice usually sits, which is a different and often much larger number.
Ontario has two separate statutory entitlements and people routinely confuse them. Termination notice (or pay instead of it) is roughly one week per year of service, capped at 8 weeks. Severance pay is a second entitlement with its own eligibility test, capped at 26 weeks. A long-service employee at a large employer can be owed both.
Above those minimums sits common-law reasonable notice. It is not a formula and no calculator produces it. It is usually far larger than the ESA minimum, and signing a release for the ESA minimum can give it away.
Inputs
Result
Enter your dates and weekly wages.
The rules this calculator applies
ESA notice of termination is owed once you have been continuously employed for at least three months. The table is one week for under a year, then two weeks at one year, rising by a week a year to a maximum of eight weeks at eight years or more. Where 50 or more employees are terminated at one establishment in a four-week period the mass-termination rules replace it: 8 weeks for 50 to 199, 12 weeks for 200 to 499, 16 weeks for 500 or more. Vacation pay accrues on termination pay, and benefit contributions must continue through the notice period.
ESA severance pay is separate and additional. You qualify if you worked for the employer for five or more years and either the employer has a global payroll of at least $2.5 million, or it severed the employment of 50 or more employees in a six-month period because all or part of the business permanently closed. The amount is your regular weekly wages multiplied by completed years of employment plus completed months in the incomplete year divided by 12, to a maximum of 26 weeks.
Common-law reasonable notice is a different thing entirely and has no formula. Ontario courts weigh the Bardal factors — the character of the position, length of service, the employee’s age, and the availability of similar work given their experience, training and qualifications — case by case. There is no absolute cap, but the Court of Appeal has said that generally only exceptional circumstances support a base notice period above 24 months. The range on this page is an orientation, not an entitlement, and the real number can sit well outside it.
Sources, last verified 2 September 2026: Ontario Ministry of Labour — termination of employment, Ontario Ministry of Labour — severance pay, Bardal v. Globe & Mail Ltd., 1960 CanLII 294 (ON SC), Lowndes v. Summit Ford Sales Ltd., 2006 CanLII 14 (ON CA).
Ontario only. Employees in federally regulated work — banks, airlines, telecoms, interprovincial transport — fall under the Canada Labour Code instead, and every other province has its own statute. Not covered here: employees excluded from notice and severance under the ESA (construction, wilful misconduct, refusal of reasonable alternative employment, retirement on a full pension), the extra rules for unionised workplaces, and human rights or reprisal claims that can sit on top of everything above. After the job ends, the EI benefits calculator covers what you can draw, and the income tax calculator covers what a lump sum does to your year.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between termination pay and severance pay in Ontario?
They are two different entitlements under the same Act. Termination pay replaces the written notice your employer should have given you: roughly a week per year of service, to a maximum of eight weeks. Almost every employee with three months of service gets it.
Severance pay compensates you for the loss of long service. It only applies at five or more years, and only where the employer has a global payroll of at least $2.5 million or is closing all or part of the business and severing 50 or more employees in six months. It is capped at 26 weeks. Where both apply, you get both — severance does not absorb termination pay.
How much severance am I entitled to in Ontario?
Under the ESA, your regular wages for a regular work week multiplied by your completed years of employment, plus completed months in the final incomplete year divided by 12, to a maximum of 26 weeks. Seven years and nine months at $1,500 a week is 7.75 × $1,500, or $11,625.
That is the statutory floor, not the answer. If your employment contract does not validly limit you to the ESA minimum, your entitlement is common-law reasonable notice, which is usually a good deal larger.
Is common-law severance just one month per year of service?
No, and treating it as a rule produces wrong answers in both directions. There is no formula. Ontario courts apply the Bardal factors: the character of the position, length of service, your age, and how readily you can find comparable work.
A 58-year-old manager with 20 years in a narrow field can be far above a month a year. A 26-year-old with 18 months in an in-demand role is often below it — though short-service employees still tend to receive more than a strictly proportional share, because even a brief job search has a floor. The generally accepted ceiling is about 24 months, exceeded only in exceptional cases.
Should I sign the severance package my employer offered?
Not before someone qualified reads it. Employer offers are frequently at or barely above the ESA minimum, and the release attached to them is what gives away the common-law entitlement, which can be several times larger. Once you sign, that difference is generally gone.
Your ESA minimum is owed to you whether or not you sign anything — it is not the employer’s to bargain with. Offers usually carry a deadline; deadlines are usually negotiable. Talk to an employment lawyer first. Many will assess a package at no charge.
Do I get severance if I was fired for cause?
Under the ESA you lose notice and severance only for wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty that is not trivial and has not been condoned. That is a high bar — deliberate wrongdoing, not poor performance, not a personality clash, not a mistake.
Employers assert cause far more often than it holds up. If you were dismissed for cause and the conduct does not match that description, the dismissal is likely a without-cause termination with the money withheld, and you should get advice.
Does severance pay affect my EI?
Ordinarily yes: severance, termination pay and vacation pay on termination are treated as earnings and allocated to the weeks after your last day, so benefits start later.
A temporary measure has suspended that. For claims or allocations starting between 30 March 2025 and 10 October 2026, separation payments are not deducted from benefits. Apply as soon as you stop working rather than waiting for the package to run out — the EI benefits calculator shows what the claim is worth.
Is severance pay taxable in Ontario?
Yes. A retiring allowance is taxable in the year you receive it, and a lump sum can push you into a higher bracket than your salary ever did. Employers withhold at lump-sum rates, which often under-withhold what you actually owe.
Two things reduce the damage: a portion may be transferable directly to an RRSP without using contribution room where the service predates 1996, and taking the payment as salary continuance rather than a lump sum spreads it across tax years. Both are worth raising before you sign. Run the numbers through the income tax calculator first.
How long does an employer have to pay severance in Ontario?
Severance pay is due by the later of seven days after your employment is severed and what would have been your next regular pay day.
It can be paid in instalments, but only with your electronic or written agreement or the approval of the Director of Employment Standards, and the arrangement cannot run beyond three years. If the employer misses a scheduled payment, all of the remaining severance pay becomes due immediately. Termination pay has its own deadline under the ESA — confirm it with the Ministry of Labour.
What is a mass termination in Ontario?
Where an employer terminates 50 or more employees at one establishment within a four-week period, the ordinary notice table is replaced by a longer one: 8 weeks for 50 to 199 employees, 12 weeks for 200 to 499, and 16 weeks for 500 or more. Everyone in the group gets the same notice, whatever their individual service.
The employer also has to file a form with the Director of Employment Standards, and the notice period does not begin until that filing is made. Severance pay, if you qualify for it, is owed on top.
Estimate only — not legal advice
This page calculates ESA minimums. Those minimums are a floor, not a fair number, and most employees dismissed without cause in Ontario are entitled to considerably more under the common law. The common-law figure shown is an indicative range only. It is not a calculation, it has no legal force, and your actual entitlement can fall outside it in either direction.
Accepting an employer’s ESA-minimum offer, or signing the release attached to it, can waive a much larger common-law entitlement permanently. Have an employment lawyer review any offer before you sign it. Nothing here is legal advice, no solicitor-client relationship is created by using it, and the figures depend entirely on inputs this page cannot verify. Confirm current entitlements with the Ontario Ministry of Labour at 1-800-531-5551 or the sources linked above.