Saskatchewan severance and termination pay (2026): what you're owed when your job ends

When your job ends in Saskatchewan, Part II of The Saskatchewan Employment Act sets the floor. Once you have 13 weeks of service you're owed written notice of termination, from 1 week up to 8 weeks depending on your length of service, or pay instead of the notice you didn't get. There is no separate statutory severance pay, so severance here means that pay instead of notice. Vacation pay is owed on top, at 5.77% of your wages from the first year and 7.69% once you pass ten years, and everything is due within 14 days of your last day.

Updated September 6, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources

The calculator above is set to Saskatchewan's Act; the same tool with a jurisdiction selector is on the severance pay hub.

Who the Act covers, and who is federally regulated instead

Part II covers employees and employers in Saskatchewan, with one large exclusion: workers whose main duties are farming, ranching or market gardening (SEA s. 2-3). The regulations also take out family-only undertakings, sitters and athletes, and strip particular groups of particular rights: commercial fishers and commercial trappers lose annual vacation, public holidays and the layoff and termination rules alike; teachers lose annual vacation and public holidays; and care providers other than live-in care providers lose the layoff and termination rules (SK ES Regs s. 1-3). One test comes first, though: if your employer is in an industry Parliament regulates rather than the province, the Canada Labour Code applies instead. Banks, air transport, railways and interprovincial trucking, telecom, grain elevators and most Crown corporations belong on the federally regulated page, which has a longer ladder and a statutory severance pay that Saskatchewan doesn't have.

Notice of termination, and the pay instead of it

Section 2-60 is the core of it, and it begins by saying who is covered: "no employer shall lay off or terminate the employment of an employee who has been in the employer's service for more than 13 consecutive weeks without giving that employee written notice" (SEA s. 2-60). Read the first six words again. A layoff needs notice here exactly as a dismissal does, and that's the most useful thing a Saskatchewan worker can know.

Source: The Saskatchewan Employment Act, s. 2-60 — Notice required. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Notice is owed once you have 13 weeks of continuous service.

Below the qualifying service nothing is owed. Above it, service is your continuous time with that employer, and it stays continuous unless it's broken by more than fourteen consecutive days. Vacation and statutory leave don't break it. Notice steps up in flat bands, so crossing a line gives you the whole band and part of a band adds nothing.

Working notice or pay instead of notice

Your employer can give the written notice and keep you working through it, end the job at once and pay instead, or do some of each. For any part you weren't given, section 2-61 takes the more generous of two measures: the greater of what you actually earned in that stretch and your normal wages for it, leaving out the vacation entitlement that would have built up (SEA s. 2-61). If your pay moved around, one week of normal wages is "the equivalent of the employee's average weekly wage, not including overtime pay, for the 13 weeks the employee worked preceding" the notice or the last day.

During the notice period your employer can't make you take vacation leave as part of it (SEA s. 2-60), so it can't send you off on vacation you already earned and call that notice. At a remote site it also has to get you to the nearest point with regular transport, at its own cost.

When no notice is owed

Saskatchewan's list is remarkably short. The only exception written into the notice section itself is just cause: no carve-out for fixed-term contracts, none for seasonal work, none for construction. Beyond that, the only people outside the section are those below the qualifying service and the occupations the regulations remove. Just cause is something your employer has to prove, not just assert in a letter, and the burden of proving it sits squarely with the employer. See what you are still owed when you are fired for cause.

Layoffs, and why Saskatchewan has no layoff clock

Most provinces let a layoff run for weeks before it counts as a termination. Saskatchewan runs no such clock. The Act defines the word instead: "'layoff' means the temporary interruption by an employer of the services of an employee for a period exceeding six consecutive work days" (SEA s. 2-1). Anything shorter is not a layoff. Anything longer is one, and section 2-60 then requires the same written notice, or the same money, as a dismissal. The other jurisdictions are on temporary layoff rules.

A worked example

Take Marc, seven full years at a Saskatoon parts distributor, told on a Monday that he is laid off with no return date and no written notice. His regular pay is $1,050 a week before overtime. Seven years puts him in the band worth 6 weeks, and because the layoff runs past six work days it is a layoff under the Act, so he's owed $6,300.00 instead of the notice he didn't get.

There is no separate severance pay in Saskatchewan

Only two Canadian jurisdictions have a statutory severance pay sitting on top of notice, Ontario and the federal jurisdiction, and Saskatchewan is not one of them. The Act's own term is "pay instead of notice", calculated under section 2-61 (SEA s. 2-61). So a severance package offered in Regina is that pay instead of notice, whatever the covering letter calls it. The two ideas are pulled apart on termination pay versus severance pay.

That is a floor, not a forecast. A contract or a collective agreement can promise more, and outside Quebec the courts award reasonable notice at common law that is often well above the statutory minimum. This site doesn't calculate it and gives no ranges, because the answer turns on your age, your job, your service and how hard a comparable job is to find. If a release is attached to the offer in front of you, that's when an employment lawyer earns their fee. What you get here is the floor underneath that conversation.

Group terminations: a threshold that moved in 2026

This is the part most likely to be wrong elsewhere. The group threshold used to be ten employees. It's now 25 employees, under section 2-62 (SEA s. 2-62), which asks for notice where an employer intends to end that many jobs in a workplace inside a four-week period. The change came with the Employment Standards Regulations, 2025, on January 1, 2026, and the periods moved out of the Act into section 6-2 of those regulations (SK ES Regs s. 6-2).

Source: The Employment Standards Regulations, 2025, s. 6-2 — Notice re group terminations. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. When an employer means to end 25 or more jobs in one workplace inside a four-week span, it has to give written notice to the minister, to every affected employee and to any union, saying how many jobs go, on what dates and why. The period is four weeks for 25 to 49 employees, eight weeks for 50 to 99, and twelve weeks for 100 or more. This notice runs on top of your individual notice under section 2-60, though the two can be given at the same time. It does not apply to on-call employees who can refuse work, definite-term or specific-project hires, people who refused reasonable alternative work, normal seasonal shutdowns, layoffs of 26 weeks or less, or retirements at the employer's established retirement age.

Two features matter to you. The notice goes to the affected employees as well as to the minister and any union, so you should receive it yourself. In most provinces the group filing goes only to the government. And it runs on top of your own notice under section 2-60 rather than replacing it, though the two may be served together. It doesn't reach on-call employees who are free to refuse work, definite-term hires, people who turned down reasonable alternative work, seasonal shutdowns or retirements at the established retirement age. The country-wide comparison is on mass termination and group layoffs.

The notice you owe when you quit

Saskatchewan does ask something of you, and the amount doesn't grow with your service (SEA s. 2-63).

Source: The Saskatchewan Employment Act, s. 2-63 — Employee notice re termination. Reviewed on September 6, 2026.

You owe nothing before the qualifying period, and nothing where there is a contrary custom in your industry, where staying would endanger your health or safety, where the contract became impossible to perform, while you are on temporary layoff, where you turned down reasonable alternative work, or where you're leaving because your employer cut your wage rate, overtime rate, vacation pay, public holiday pay or termination pay. Quitting doesn't touch your vacation pay. How much notice you owe when you quit compares all fourteen jurisdictions.

Vacation pay on your final pay

Saskatchewan is the best province in the country on this line, and it isn't close. Everywhere else the statutory minimum starts at two weeks. Here it's 3 weeks after your first completed year and 4 weeks once you have ten years in (SEA s. 2-24).

Source: The Saskatchewan Employment Act, s. 2-24 — Annual vacation periods and common date. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. When the job ends your employer has 14 days to pay the vacation pay you are owed. You get it on every dollar of wages that has not already had vacation pay paid on it, and you get it whether or not you ever completed a full year of employment.

The Act writes the money as a fraction rather than a percentage: three fifty-seconds of your wages while you're on three weeks, four fifty-seconds once you're on four (SEA s. 2-27). The percentages in the table are those fractions rounded, so the calculator uses the fraction. Wages here take in overtime, public holiday pay, vacation pay and pay instead of notice (SEA s. 2-1). When the job ends, section 2-29 puts the vacation pay you're owed on the same deadline as the rest of the final pay, on every dollar of wages that hasn't already had vacation pay paid on it, whether or not you completed a full year (SEA s. 2-29).

Back to Marc. Since his last vacation payout he had earned $29,400 in wages. At seven years his rate is 5.77%, so the vacation pay on his final cheque is about $1,696.38, on top of the money instead of notice. Being laid off, being fired for cause and quitting all leave it untouched: it's money he has already earned. The same rule across the country is on vacation pay when your job ends.

Public holidays in your last weeks

Saskatchewan's word is public holiday, and the Act names 10 of them, more than any other province (SEA s. 2-30). Saskatchewan Day is one; the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is not. A public holiday that falls while you're still employed, including inside a notice period you're working or being paid for, is a paid day.

Source: The Saskatchewan Employment Act, s. 2-30 — Public holidays. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. The statute names 10 holidays.

The pay formula is a straight percentage of recent wages: "An employer shall pay an employee for every public holiday an amount equal to: (a) 5% of the employee's wages, not including overtime pay, earned in the four weeks preceding the public holiday" (SEA s. 2-32). Vacation pay for vacation you actually took in those four weeks counts as wages, and so does any other public holiday pay inside them. Work the holiday and you get that amount plus one and a half times your hourly wage for every hour, or part of an hour, you were required or allowed to work or to be at your employer's disposal.

Now the part that surprises people: there is no qualifying period and no attendance test at all. Every employee covered by Part II is paid for every public holiday, full time, part time or casual, whether they started last week or ten years ago. Alberta asks for thirty work days first, and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have their own tests. Read "every employee" as every employee still inside the public-holiday subdivision, though. Teachers, commercial fishers and commercial trappers are lifted out of it entirely by the regulations (SK ES Regs s. 1-3). All fourteen lists and formulas are on statutory holiday pay by province.

When your final pay has to arrive

Saskatchewan runs one clock, and it's short: "If the employment of an employee ends, the employer shall pay to the employee the total wages to which the employee is entitled within 14 days after the day on which the employment ends" (SEA s. 2-33). Vacation pay has its own rule in section 2-29 with the same deadline, so in practice everything arrives together.

The same 14 days applies whether you were let go or you quit, and money already due on an earlier pay day can't be held back because of it. Wages take in overtime, public holiday pay, vacation pay and pay instead of notice (SEA s. 2-1), while discretionary bonuses and tips sit outside total wages. The fourteen deadlines are on final pay deadlines by province.

Severance and EI

The permanent rule is that money paid when a job ends delays Employment Insurance: under section 36 of the EI Regulations it counts as earnings and is allocated to the weeks after your last day, so benefits don't start until it runs out. That isn't what's happening right now. A temporary measure switches the allocation off, and the waiting period with it, for benefit periods that begin on or before October 10, 2026, so someone paid several weeks instead of notice can still draw EI from the first week of the claim. Read the end date rather than the promise.

Apply either way, and apply early. Waiting for a settlement, for your record of employment or for a cheque to clear is not a reason to hold off. Saskatchewan's EI regions and a worked example are on the Saskatchewan EI page, and the detail is on severance pay and EI.

What the statutory minimum does not include

Three things sit outside everything above, and all three can be worth more than the Act. Common law notice: outside Quebec a court can award reasonable notice far beyond the minimum, and this site doesn't estimate it. Your contract: it can promise more, and the better term wins, though it can never promise less. A collective agreement: if you're unionized it governs most of this, and your route is a grievance rather than a claim to the director.

The Act can't tell you whether your dismissal was lawful, whether the just cause your employer alleges would hold up, or whether a release is a good deal. Take the figure from this page to an employment lawyer. Sergio, the editor of Owed at Work, is not a lawyer, which is why this site publishes its method and its sections instead of an opinion.

How to file a claim

You have 12 months, counted from the day your final payment of wages was due (SEA s. 2-89). Waiting costs money as well as time, because recovery is capped at wages that became payable in your last twelve months of employment, so a delay can put part of the claim out of reach even when the claim itself is in time.

The claim goes to the director of employment standards, who can investigate and issue a wage assessment against your employer and, in some cases, its corporate directors personally. It costs nothing to file, and you can still sue for wages in court. The form and the instructions are at saskatchewan.ca.