Employment Standards

Every figure on this page is one you can be paid more than and never less. The Employment Standards Act fixes what an Ontario employer can't go below; it has nothing to say about what a contract, a collective agreement or a court puts on top. Two of the four calculators here produce a floor that is usually also the answer. The other two produce a floor that, for anyone dismissed without cause, is usually only the opening figure.

Four thresholds do the work, and they're worth knowing as numbers. 44 hours in a work week is where overtime begins at time and a half — counted over the week, never the day, and at 44 rather than the 40 that federal jobs and most other provinces use. Three months of service is where termination notice starts, at one week, and it climbs one week per completed year to a cap of eight. Five years is the pivot two tools share: vacation pay steps from 4% of gross wages to 6% and a third week of time off arrives, and five years is also the first of the two conditions for statutory severance. $2.5 million of payroll is the second — the employer's global payroll, or failing that a permanent closure that cut 50 or more jobs inside six months. Clear both and severance runs a week per year of service, part-years counted by the month, to a ceiling of 26 weeks.

Notice and severance are separate rights, so someone with long tenure at a big enough employer collects both: up to eight weeks of one and 26 of the other. What neither calculator attempts is the number that sits above them. Common-law reasonable notice is set case by case from age, length of service, the kind of role and how quickly comparable work can be found, and for a mid-career employee with real tenure it is routinely several times the ESA weeks. If a package quotes the statutory figure and comes with a release to sign, the number on this site is where the conversation starts, not where it ends.

When a job does end, three of the four land on the same final payment. Vacation pay is owed on every dollar earned up to the last day, whether or not the entitlement year finished; notice pay and any severance are paid as lump sums; and payroll withholds those lump sums the way it withholds a bonus, so the net figure comes in under the gross by more than a normal week's cheque would. Overtime is the one that lives entirely inside the job.

All of this is Ontario. Banks, airlines, telecoms, rail and the other federally regulated employers fall under the Canada Labour Code, whose thresholds and rates are different, and the other provinces each run their own act. The calculators don't switch jurisdictions; if the employer isn't provincially regulated in Ontario, the numbers here aren't the floor that applies.