How generous is the Civil service pension?

[Brogues]

I have always worked in the private sector and currently get my pension contributions matched up to 10%. Looking at the scheme for the civil service, employee contributions would be about 7 or 8%. The salary for a job I’m interested in is a little lower than equivalent in private sector, as I’d expect, so how do I begin to work out if it’s a comparable package before I think about it further please?

Google says it’s good but not as good as it has been and the examples look to be from first job to retirement whereas I’d have a max of 20 years to state retirement age so a bit in the dark how I would work it out. Rough percentages would suffice.

Thanks.

Very good.

its not about the contributions: you get a percentage of your salary as a future pension. It's defined benefit if you want to read about the difference between that and defined contribution.

Very approximately it's worth an extra 25%-33% on your salary. Plus no stock market risk.

Thanks @HappyHolidai I had started with the premise it might be around 30% but wasn’t sure where I’d got that from and if it was still relevant. Very helpful!

It is not as good as it was. It used to be a final salary pension scheme with a normal pension aged of 60. It is now a career average scheme with a normal pension age in line with the state pension, so 66 increasing to 67.

It depends on the department some are civil service pensions some are others like lgmpf , compared to private sector they are good, but the pay is usually lower than the equivalent positions in the private sector

Short answer - compared to private schemes, very generous indeed

If you join the civil service now you will be on an 'average salary' defined benefit scheme (known as alpha). This means for every year you are a member you get 2.32% of your annual salary added to your pension. You will need to make contributions of between 4.5% and 8.05% depending on your salary, with the employer (i.e. the government) making up the rest. This is index linked

By comparison, if you are on a regular private sector defined contribution scheme to get the same amount of pension the contributions would need to be about 44% of your salary