How Many Years of Service Do I Need?
The threshold itself depends on your plan — see When Can I Retire? for that table. This page answers a different question: what actually counts as a "year" in the first place.
💬 GLP Retirement MinuteHow a Year of Service Actually Gets Earned
Service credit is hours-based. Your school reports your hours worked to ORS, and that's what accumulates into years of credit.
Full-time work is capped at 1,020 hours per year for credit purposes — that's what equals one full year, regardless of your actual position type.
Part-time or less-than-full-year work earns prorated credit based on your hours against that cap — working half the hours earns roughly half a year of credit.
Used vacation and sick leave, short-term disability payments through payroll, and workers' compensation payments all count toward your total — you're not penalized for legitimate time off.
Long-term disability payments do not earn service credit — worth knowing if you're navigating an extended leave.
Even employees who work well beyond a standard schedule — 2,080 hours a year is common for many administrative roles — are still capped at exactly 1.0 year of credit. There's no way to earn "more than a year" in a single year by working extra hours.
MPSERS allows purchasing service credit in some circumstances — through payroll-deducted payment plans or transfers from other qualified retirement accounts. Cost and eligibility depend on your specific situation, so this is one to confirm directly with ORS rather than assume either way.
Log into miAccount to see your exact years of service credit earned and purchased to date — this page explains the mechanics, but your real number lives there.
"Years of service" isn't just a count of calendar years you've shown up — it's a specific, hours-based tally with its own rules. Knowing how it's built helps explain why your miAccount total might not match a simple "years since I was hired" guess.