Ontario vacation pay calculator

How the calculation works

Vacation pay = gross wages for the 12-month vacation entitlement year, not counting vacation pay itself, × 4% for under five years of employment or × 6% for five years or more. Vacation time is two weeks under five years and three weeks at five years or more. If your wages figure already includes vacation pay, the tool divides it by 1.04 or 1.06 first to find the wages that earned it.

A worked example

At an illustrative $52,000 of gross wages and three years of employment, vacation pay is 4%, or $2,080.00, for two weeks of vacation time, and wages plus vacation pay come to $54,080.00. At five years the same wages earn 6%, or $3,120.00, and three weeks. Every $1,000 of wages carries $40.00 of vacation pay at 4% and $60.00 at 6%.

Assumptions and limits

These are ESA minimums. A contract, a collective agreement or an employer policy can give more, and some jobs are exempt from the vacation pay provisions, so check the special rules for the role. The five-year threshold is measured at the end of the vacation entitlement year. An employer that sets an alternative entitlement year prorates the vacation time for the stub period, which this tool does not do. Employees earn vacation pay as they earn wages, even if they leave before completing the year. Vacation pay is part of earnings, so income tax, CPP and EI are normally taken from it; your payroll provider works out the amounts.

General educational information. Inputs stay on this device and are not submitted. Confirm the assumptions before using a result in a business decision.

Source and further reading

Vacation rules checked October 24, 2026 against the ontario.ca guide: Ontario: your guide to the Employment Standards Act, vacation time and vacation pay. The examples above use Sora’s own illustrative figures.

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