Experience Calculator: Length of Service in Years, Months and Days

Enter the date you took charge and the date your service ends, or leave the end blank for today. The calculator counts both days and gives your service in years, months and days. From 1 March 1999 to 30 September 2026 is 27 years and 7 months.

Open the breaks section to take off periods that do not count, such as a break in service or extraordinary leave without pay. The result also shows the whole years that count for pension, where a part year of six months or more counts as a full year.

How service is counted

Service runs from the date you took charge of the post to the last day of service, and both days count. Someone appointed on 1 January 2000 who retires on 31 December 2029 has exactly 30 years of service.

Breaks are added up in days, both days counted, and turned into months of 30 days and years of 12 months. That is taken off the total service, borrowing 30 days for a month and 12 months for a year, the way service books are worked. The totals in days are shown too.

Worked example

Appointed 1 March 1999, service counted to 30 September 2026, with a break from 1 June to 30 November 2008.

The break of 183 days is 6 months of 30 days plus 3 days. Borrowing a month of 30 days gives 27 years and 27 days. In days that is 10,076 days of total service less 183 days of break.

Qualifying service for pension

For government pension, net service is turned into whole years:

• Six months or more rounds up. A shortfall of up to six months is condoned, so 28 years and 7 months counts as 29 years. Less than six months is dropped: 28 years and 5 months counts as 28.
• 30 years at most count for pension, however long you served.
• 10 years is the minimum for a pension. With 5 to 10 years a gratuity is paid instead.
• 25 years of qualifying service lets you ask for voluntary retirement.

Periods that do not qualify, such as extraordinary leave without pay, are taken off before the rounding. Your accounts office makes the final count. Take the counted years to the pension calculator to see your pension.

Experience across several jobs

For an experience certificate or a job application, count each job from the date on the certificate to its end date, both days included. A certificate from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020 is 1 full year, not 1 year minus a day. Run the calculator once for each job, then add the periods in years, months and days, turning every 30 days into a month and 12 months into a year.

If two jobs overlap, such as a morning school and an evening academy, the shared days count once. Take the overlap off before you add.

Worked example: three certificates

Counted up to 30 September 2026:

1. Jobs 1 and 2 overlap from 15 to 31 March 2018, so run them as one period: 1 July 2016 to 31 August 2021, which is 5 years and 2 months.
2. The gap from 1 September 2021 to 9 January 2022 is not experience.
3. Add job 3: 9 years, 10 months and 21 days in total. Added naively, the three certificates would have claimed 17 extra days.

For gratuity under the Standing Orders, each completed year of service counts, and a part year of more than six months is usually treated as a full year; see the gratuity calculator.

What counts as experience for government jobs

The Federal Public Service Commission's general instructions to candidates (updated November 2025) set the rules most commissions follow:

• Experience must be post-qualification: gained after the result of the required degree is officially announced, not after the last exam.
• It is counted up to the closing date of the advert.
• It must be a regular, full-time paid job. Daily-wage and contingent service and on-the-job training count if relevant.
• Part-time, honorary, self-employed, apprentice and internship periods are not counted, and experience that overlaps another period of post-qualification experience is not admissible.
• Certificates sent after the closing date are not accepted unless the commission asks for them.

So set the start date to your degree's result date if you joined earlier, and the end date to the advert's closing date. Provincial commissions and private employers can set their own rules; the advert decides. Check your age on the same closing date with the government job age calculator.

PEC and HEC experience

The Pakistan Engineering Council registers a Professional Engineer after 5 years of professional experience following an accredited engineering degree; graduates not already registered with PEC need 10 years after graduation for the Category II route. For HEC and university posts that ask for experience after a PhD or MPhil, count from that degree's notification date.

To count only working days between two dates, with Pakistan's public holidays, use the working days calculator.

Service length questions

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