To determine Employment Eligibility for TRS Membership, one requirement is that employment must be for one-half or more of the time required of the standard workload for the same or similar full-time position.
The first step to determine if someone meets the requirement, is to identify if there is a full-time equivalent (FTE) for the position.
- For most positions, this will fall between 30-40 hours per week. However, there are many positions that may have no FTE.
- If an employee working in a position is considered full-time at less than 30 hours per week or the position does not have any employees working 30 or more hours, the position will have no FTE for TRS reporting purposes. For example, bus drivers for a certain school district might only work a maximum of 25 hours per week. This means the bus driving position does not have an FTE.
For employees with no FTE, the minimum number of hours required per week to qualify the position for TRS membership is 15 hours per week. This requirement applies to all positions, except adjunct faculty positions at institutions of higher education.
Additionally, for an employee with no FTE to be considered ineligible they must be expected to work less than 15 hours per week, which is similar to employees with an FTE of 30. Please make sure to review each employee for eligibility at the time of hire, or if position changes occur throughout the year.
If an employee is combining multiple positions at the same employer with no FTE, then the combined expected hours must remain under 15 hours per week to be ineligible. If the combined hours are 15 hours or more, this satisfies the TRS requirement of the FTE by working one-half time.
If you are unsure if an employee is TRS eligible, please reach out to your RE coach for assistance, and provide as much detail of their weekly hours as possible so eligibility can be determined.