The new flexible retirement that the Government approved last May starts this Friday with important news. This retirement modality, which allows those who have already retired to re-enter the labor market with part-time jobs and combine them with their pension, was not having the success that the Executive expected. The number of applications had been stagnant for some time, unlike other modalities that allow work and pension to be reconciled, such as active, partial or flexible retirement, which have taken off in recent years.
To try to promote this figure, the Government has introduced new features in the regulation. Among them, more economic incentives for those who decide to take advantage of it, the end of the moratorium that was required to request it after retiring or the possibility of it being possible to combine retirement with self-employed activity. Something that, until now, was not allowed.
The main requirement to be able to enjoy flexible retirement does not change: it is necessary to have earned the right to a pension. Of course, as a novelty it will no longer be necessary to wait a 'quarantine' period to access it, it will be possible from the moment you begin to receive a benefit.
The new rule expands the range of permitted reductions in working hours, so that those who rejoin will be able to do so with partial contracts between 33 and 80% of an equivalent full working day, instead of the 25-75% in force until now. As was already the case with the previous regulations, the retired person will see their pension reduced proportionally to the work they do.
However, the new regulation introduces an economic incentive for those who take advantage of flexible retirement at least six months after retiring from work. For those who return to work with shifts between 55 and 80% of full time, the pension will be increased by 25% for the duration of the employment relationship. A percentage that is reduced to 15% for those who have hours between 33 and 55%.
For the first time, also for the self-employed
Another of the great novelties of the reform is that, for the first time, this type of retirement can be combined with self-employment activity. A person who retires may re-engage as a self-employed employee, although this possibility is limited to those who have not been registered in the self-employed regime in the three years prior to the date of their retirement. Those who choose this route will be able to receive up to 25% of the pension that corresponds to them while they carry out their activity.
In addition, the regulation allows people who retired early involuntarily and at a lower age than the ordinary retirement age to take advantage of this re-entry into the labor market to improve their pension. In such a way that the periods that they contribute to flexible retirement will allow them to recalculate their initial pension upwards and thus compensate for the loss of benefit that this early retirement could have caused them.
The decree applies to all Social Security regimes except the special regimes of Civil State officials, the Armed Forces and personnel at the service of the Administration of Justice.
As pointed out at the time by the Minister in charge of Social Security, Elma Saiz, the rest of the ways to combine pension and work are increasingly in demand. Thus, delayed retirement has gone from 4.8% of retirements in 2021 to 10.9% last year. While active retirements have increased by 5,602 pensioners in one year.
Along the same lines, early retirements have been reduced from 43% of those registered in 2018 to 30% currently, after the Government tightened the requirements. At the same time, the time in which the retirement age is brought forward has been reduced. In 2021, 46% of early retirements were given at the minimum age allowed (24 months before the ordinary age), a percentage that was 14.5% last year.
