LONG CAREERS. With the pension reform, the government wants to improve the system for long careers by allowing as many people as possible to benefit from it. To do this, a new age threshold of 18 will be created.
[Mis à jour le 11 janvier 2022 à 15h25] In terms of retirement, people who started working early can benefit from a specific status so that they leave several years before the legal age: this is called the “long career “. To benefit from this early departure, it is necessary to fulfill certain criteria related to age, the duration of pension insurance, and to justify a certain number of quarters contributed. On Tuesday January 10, during the presentation of the pension reform, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced that she wanted to “keep and improve the system known as long careers by making it fairer. We will create an intermediate level for those who started working before 18 years old,” she said.
Indeed, the executive has decided to add a new age threshold to benefit from the device. From now on, people who started working before the age of 18 will be able to leave 4 years before the legal age, from the age of 60, if they have contributed for 44 years. People who started working at age 15 will now be able to leave at age 59, and up to age 58 for those who started working at age 14. Finally, women who have benefited from parental leave will be able to report it and take advantage of the long career system. In other words, they will be able to validate up to four quarters in this situation. Enough to allow more than 3,000 women to leave earlier. With the pension reform and the lowering of the legal retirement age to 64, the government therefore wishes to strengthen and consolidate the long career system, allowing one in five French people to leave early.
Through this pension reform, the government promises a reform “adapted, so that no one who started working early is forced to work over 44 years”. Here is the new retirement age, based on your starting age. Please note, to benefit from this early departure, it is mandatory to have validated at least 5 terms before the age of 20:
- 58 years old : if you started working at 14 years old
- 59 years old : if you started working at 15 years old
- 60 years : if you started working at 16 years old
- 61 years old : if you started working at 17 years
- 62 years old : if you started working between 18 and 20 years old
To benefit from early retirement for a long career, you must have started working before 20 years. Two other conditions prevail. First, your pension insurance period must include, all compulsory basic schemes combined, a minimum number of quarters contributed. Also, you must have acquired a minimum number of quarters of retirement insurance at the start of your career. These 2 conditions for the duration of pension insurance vary according to your year of birth, the age from which you started working and the age from which you plan to take early retirement.
The 2023 pension reform slightly modified the system for long careers by introducing a new threshold, set at 18 years. From now on, if you started working before the age of 18, it will be possible to retire at age 60, i.e. four years earlier (if you contributed at least 44). As mentioned above, the earlier you started working, the earlier you can retire.
The national pension fund for local authority employees (CNRACL) is the pension fund for the basic scheme of local government and hospital employees. It is a public administrative institution of the State, it is managed by the Pensions and Solidarity Department of Caisse des Dépôts. Note that the conditions for obtaining a “long career” pension are exactly the same as for other civil servants.