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Benefit Factor
Your benefit factor is the percentage of pay to which you are entitled for each year of service. It is determined by
your age at retirement and the retirement formula based on your membership date with each employer. This
guide explains the following local miscellaneous retirement formulas:
*membership date on or after January 1, 2013
Understanding Your Retirement Formula
On the following page you will find a chart for each of these local miscellaneous retirement formulas that shows
the percentage of final compensation you will receive.
If you became a member prior to January 1, 2013, but you permanently separate from employment and return to
membership after a break in service of more than six months, you are subject to the retirement formula in place
on January 1, 2013 of 2%@ 62, for any service credit earned after that date. This does not apply if you return to
the same employer. The same employer does not necessarily mean the employer you last worked for. For
example, if you worked for a public agency and then left to work for a state agency or school, you can return to
the same public agency you previously worked for and it would be considered the same public agency employer.
Final Compensation
Your final compensation is the highest average annual compensation earnable for 36 consecutive months. We use
your full-time pay rate, not your earnings. If you work part time, we will use your full-time equivalent pay rate to
determine your final compensation. my|CalPERS automatically finds and uses the highest compensation period
during your employment with CalPERS.
If your membership date is on or after January 1, 2013, there is a cap on the compensation used to calculate
your benefit. Since your service is coordinated with Social Security, the compensation cap used to calculate your
benefit is equal to the 2013 Social Security wage base, adjusted by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban
Consumers: City Average. For 2016, the cap was $117,020