Employment Insurance after your job ends (2026): how much, how long, how many hours

Regular Employment Insurance (EI) pays 55% of your average insurable earnings in your best weeks, up to $729.00 per week in 2026. To qualify you need insurable hours in the 52 weeks before your claim starts, and how many depends on where you live: 700 hours in the regions with the lowest unemployment, down to 420 hours in the regions with the highest. Benefits run from 14 weeks to 45 weeks, again set by your region and your hours. The regional figures on this page are the ones in force for August 9 to September 5, 2026.

Updated September 6, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources

The estimator at the top of this page

Pick your region, put in your insurable hours for the last year and what you earned in your best weeks, and it tells you whether your hours clear the bar your region sets, what your weekly benefit works out to and how many weeks the Act's schedule gives you. It runs in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere, stored, or added to the page's address. It applies the Employment Insurance Act and its Regulations to your numbers. Service Canada decides the claim itself, working from your record of employment (ROE) rather than your memory of your hours.

Who can draw regular EI

Regular benefits are for people who lost work through no fault of their own and are ready to work. Four conditions have to line up.

• An interruption of earnings. You were let go, laid off, or your contract ran out, and your earnings from that employer have stopped. That break is what the ROE reports, and it starts the clock.
• Enough insurable hours in the qualifying period. You need at least the hours the Act's table sets for your region (EI Act s. 7), earned in the 52 weeks before your claim begins, or since your last claim if that is shorter (EI Act s. 8). Hours from every insurable job in that window count, part-time hours included.
• You did not quit without just cause. Walking away on your own disqualifies you unless your reasons meet the test the Act sets out (EI Act s. 29).
• You were not dismissed for misconduct. Being fired is not by itself misconduct. The word is narrow: conduct that was wilful, or so reckless it comes to the same thing. Poor performance is not misconduct (EI Act s. 30).

"A claimant is disqualified from receiving any benefits if the claimant lost any employment because of their misconduct or voluntarily left any employment without just cause" (EI Act s. 30).

A disqualification is not a penalty that runs out. It lasts until you work enough insurable hours in a new job to qualify all over again. No website can tell you how your case will be decided: Service Canada decides, and you can ask for a reconsideration and then appeal. What this page shows you is the test and the figures behind it.

Your EI economic region, and why it decides so much

EI is federal, but it is not uniform. The country is divided into economic regions, each with an unemployment rate updated every four weeks. That single rate drives three things: the insurable hours you need to qualify (EI Act s. 7), how many of your best-paid weeks your benefit is averaged over (EI Act s. 14), and, together with your hours, how many weeks you can draw (EI Act, Schedule I).

The region that counts is where you ordinarily reside when your benefit period starts, not where your employer's office is and not where you worked. If you commute across a regional line, your home address decides.

The effect is bigger than people expect. In August 9 to September 5, 2026, one region needs only 420 hours to qualify while several need 700 hours: the difference between a season of full-time work and the better part of half a year.

The full table is on the EI regions page, and each province and territory has its own page with its regions, a worked example and the estimator preset to it.

• Ontario
• Quebec
• British Columbia
• Alberta
• Manitoba
• Saskatchewan
• Nova Scotia
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Prince Edward Island
• Yukon
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut

How many insurable hours you need

The Act sets the bar in a table of rate bands. The higher the unemployment rate in your region, the fewer hours you need, and the steps between bands are even.

Source: Employment Insurance Act, s. 7 - Qualification requirement (hours by regional rate). Reviewed on September 6, 2026.

An insurable hour is an hour you actually worked and were paid for, and your employer reports the total on your ROE. Overtime counts as hours worked, not at its premium rate. Vacation you took counts; vacation pay cashed out adds no hours. Hours with two employers in the same week both count.

Read the table with your region's current rate in hand. Each band is open at the bottom and closed at the top, so a rate landing exactly on a boundary belongs to the lower band. A rate that moves a tenth of a point at the start of a period can move you a whole band, which is why the period is stamped on every table here.

How much EI pays

The rate is fixed for everyone:

"The rate of weekly benefits payable to a claimant is 55% of their weekly insurable earnings" (EI Act s. 14).

The work is in the phrase "weekly insurable earnings". It is not your last salary and not an average of the whole year. It is the average of your best-paid weeks in the qualifying period, and how many of those weeks go into the average is set by your region's rate.

Source: Employment Insurance Act, s. 14 - Rate of weekly benefits and best weeks. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Your weekly benefit is worked out from the average of your best weeks of insurable earnings in the qualifying period. The higher the unemployment rate of your region, the fewer weeks the average is divided by.

That second column is a divisor, and it does two jobs. Where unemployment is high, fewer weeks are averaged, so a run of good weeks counts for more. If you have fewer weeks with earnings than the divisor, it is still used: your total is divided by a number bigger than the weeks you actually worked, so gaps in the year pull the average down. That is the most common reason a benefit comes out lower than expected.

A worked example

Nadia was laid off from a warehouse job in Toronto. Her ROE shows 1,240 insurable hours in the last year, and her best-paid weeks averaged $900.00 in insurable earnings.

• Toronto's rate for August 9 to September 5, 2026 is 6.8%, so the hours she needs are 665 hours and her benefit is averaged over her 21 best-paid weeks. Her 1,240 hours clear the bar.
• Her weekly benefit: $900.00 × 55% = $495.00.
• That is below the 2026 maximum of $729.00 per week, so she is paid the full rate. Income tax is withheld from it.

The cap only matters at the top. Insurable earnings stop at $68,900.00 per year, which is $1,325.00 a week, and 55% of that is $728.75, the weekly maximum once it is rounded to the dollar (EI Act s. 17). Earning above the ceiling adds nothing to your benefit or your premiums.

There is one rate above 55%. If you have children, and your household receives the Canada Child Benefit, and your net family income is no more than $25,921.00, the family supplement can lift the rate to as much as 80% of average weekly insurable earnings (EI Act s. 16, EI Regulations s. 34). The weekly maximum still applies, and Service Canada works it out: you do not have to ask for it.

How many weeks you can draw

The number of weeks is not a matter of judgment either. It is one table in the Act, Schedule I, read down the side by your insurable hours and across the top by your region's rate. Everything between 14 weeks and 45 weeks comes out of it.

Schedule I is a big table, 41 bands of insurable hours across 12 columns of regional rate, so it has a page to itself. How many weeks of EI you can get prints the schedule in full and walks through reading it.

The "minimum weeks" and "maximum weeks" columns on the regions page are not extra rules on top of Schedule I. They are the two ends of your region's own column: the minimum is the cell beside the hours that region requires to qualify, the maximum is the cell in the top row of hours. If your hours sit between those, so does your entitlement.

The temporary measures in force right now

A lot of what is written about EI, including plenty published this year, describes a system that is not the one running today. Three measures are in force, and two of them change the answer to the questions people ask most after a layoff.

As things stand today, a severance package does not push back the start of your benefits, and there is no unpaid week at the front of the claim. If a friend or an older article tells you to wait until your severance runs out before applying, they are describing the law as it was and as it is due to be again.

On October 11, 2026, unless those sections are extended again, the permanent rules come back for claims beginning on or after that date.

• Separation money is allocated. Severance, pay in lieu of notice, vacation paid out and money like it count as earnings. They are spread over the weeks after your last day, at the rate of a normal working week, so benefits do not start until that money runs out (EI Regulations s. 36). It delays your benefits; it does not reduce the weeks you are owed.
• The waiting period returns. A claim carries an unpaid waiting period of 1 week at the start, like the deductible on an insurance policy (EI Act s. 13).

This site does not predict whether the measures will be extended. It re-reads those sections and prints what they say. If they lapse, the wording here changes the same week.

Applying: the ROE, the deadline and the first payment

Your employer issues the record of employment, and it is what Service Canada works from: your insurable hours, your insurable earnings week by week, your last day paid, and a code for why the job ended. Most employers file it electronically, so you do not have to wait for a copy before you apply.

Service Canada's guidance is to apply within 4 weeks Secondary source of your last day worked. Apply later and you can lose weeks, because a claim normally starts from the Sunday of the week you apply, not the week you stopped working. A late claim is moved back only if you would have qualified on the earlier date and had good cause throughout (EI Act s. 10), and waiting for an ROE or living on severance is not usually good cause.

You will need your Social Insurance Number, every employer from the past year with your first and last days at each, your banking details for direct deposit and, if you were dismissed or quit, your own account of what happened. After that you file a report every two weeks, declaring that you were available for work and reporting any earnings. As for timing, a complete application takes weeks rather than days, and the first payment follows once the claim is approved and your first report is in. Claims missing an ROE, or raising a question about how the job ended, take longer because someone has to look at them.

Working while you are on a claim

Taking part-time or casual work while on EI almost always leaves you better off, and it is permanent law now, not a pilot project.

"there shall be deducted from benefits payable in that week the amount equal to the total of (a) 50% of the earnings that are less than or equivalent to 90% of the claimant's weekly insurable earnings, and (b) 100% of the earnings that are greater than 90% of the claimant's weekly insurable earnings" (EI Act s. 19)

So part of what you earn comes off that week's benefit and the rest stays in your pocket, until your earnings for the week reach the threshold in the second half of that sentence. Past that line, every dollar is deducted. Declare all of it on your report, in the week you did the work rather than the week you were paid. Undeclared earnings are the quickest route to an overpayment you have to give back, with a penalty on top.

Severance, termination pay and EI

What your employer owes you when the job ends is a separate question, answered jurisdiction by jurisdiction on the severance and termination pay pages. The two meet at one point: what that money does to your claim.

Today, because of the temporary measure above, it does nothing to your claim. Severance, pay in lieu of notice and vacation paid out are not counted as earnings, so benefits start when your claim starts. Once the measure lapses, EI Regulations s. 36 applies again and the money is spread over the weeks after your last day. Either way, one point is worth holding on to: allocation delays benefits; it never reduces the number of weeks Schedule I gives you. The mechanics, with worked examples, are in severance pay and EI. Whatever the date, apply as soon as the job ends.

If you work in Quebec

Regular EI benefits work the same way in Quebec as everywhere else. The Act is federal, the hours table is federal, Schedule I is federal, and Quebec's twelve economic regions sit in the same national table as the rest. The difference is what comes off your paycheque. Quebec runs its own parental insurance plan, so maternity, parental and adoption benefits are provincial there and the EI premium is lower to match: 1.3% of insurable earnings instead of 1.63%. Your regional details are on the Quebec EI page.

What EI costs you while you are working

EI is an insurance premium taken off your pay, not a tax on the year. It stops once your insurable earnings reach the ceiling, which is why well-paid people watch it vanish from the pay stub in the fall and come back in January. Outside Quebec it is 1.63% of insurable earnings, to a maximum of $1,123.07 (1.63% × $68,900.00 per year)^{calculation 1} for the year, and your employer pays a larger share on top of that.

Here is every EI figure this site holds for 2026, each with the section it comes from.