How many weeks of EI you get: Schedule I explained (2026)

Regular Employment Insurance benefits run from 14 weeks to 45 weeks, and your own number comes out of a single grid in the Employment Insurance Act: Schedule I. Two things point to the cell. Down the side are your insurable hours in the qualifying period, across the top the unemployment rate of your EI region, and where they meet is the number of weeks payable. More hours move you down the grid and more unemployment moves you across it, and both directions add weeks.

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

Two inputs, one cell

The Act is blunt about what decides it. The number of weeks

"shall be determined in accordance with the table in Schedule I by reference to the regional rate of unemployment that applies to the claimant and the number of hours of insurable employment of the claimant in their qualifying period" (EI Act s. 12).

Nothing else is in that sentence. Not your age, not how long you held the job, not what you were paid, not the reason it ended. Your pay decides the amount of each week, on the how much EI pays page. Schedule I only counts weeks.

Source: Employment Insurance Act, Schedule I - Table of Weeks of Benefits. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Read down the column for your region’s unemployment rate and across from your insurable hours.

Find the row that holds your insurable hours, run across to the column for your region's rate, and read the cell. A dash means the schedule pays nothing there: those hours are below what a region at that rate requires, so no regular benefits are payable at all. That is the same threshold set out in how many hours you need, seen from the other side.

Reading your own cell

Your hours are on your record of employment. Your region's rate for the current period, August 9 to September 5, 2026, is on the regions page, along with the hours it requires and the two ends of its column.

Take Charlottetown, in Prince Edward Island, which sits at 5.6% this period and asks for 700 hours. Someone there with exactly those hours lands on the first cell of that column, which is 14 weeks. Someone with a long, full year of insurable work lands on the last row of the grid, the open-ended one, and gets 36 weeks.

Now take Northern Manitoba, in Manitoba, at 29%. It asks for 420 hours, and the two ends of its column are 32 weeks and 45 weeks. Same hours, same grid, a very different answer, because the column moved.

Why your region shows a minimum and a maximum

The regional table publishes a minimum and a maximum number of weeks for each region, and they look like separate rules. They are not. The minimum is simply the Schedule I cell where that region's own hours requirement meets its rate column, and the maximum is the cell at the bottom row of the grid in the same column. Schedule I is the only authority; the regional columns are a convenience for people who do not want to read a grid.

That is worth knowing because it tells you what to do with the number. Your region's minimum is what you get with the bare hours to qualify. Everything you add above that walks you down the rows, a week or two at a time, until you reach the region's maximum and stop. Hours you work above the last row buy nothing more.

The window the weeks sit in

Weeks payable and weeks available are two different things. When your claim is set up, a benefit period opens, and it runs for a fixed stretch set by s. 10 of the Act. Your weeks of benefits have to be drawn inside it. If your benefit period closes before you have used every week Schedule I gave you, the rest are gone, and a week you do not claim is not banked for later.

This is the practical reason not to sit on an application while you wait for a record of employment or for severance to be paid out. Service Canada's own guidance is to apply within 4 weeks Secondary source of your last day worked. A late claim can only be moved back to an earlier date on the terms in s. 10 of the Act: you must have qualified on that earlier day and had good cause for the delay throughout. Sources: EI Act s. 10, Service Canada, applying for EI.

Extra weeks for long-tenured workers, for now

One temporary measure adds weeks on top of whatever Schedule I gives, for workers with a long record of paying into the system and drawing little out of it. It raises the ceiling above the 45 weeks of the grid at the same time. It has its own definition of a long-tenured worker, built on how much EI you have drawn in recent years and how many years you paid close to the full annual premium. The notice below carries the test, the number of extra weeks, the new ceiling and the date it all ends. It is not permanent: it is a dated measure, and the date is close.

When your region's rate moves

Regional rates are republished every four weeks, and each new table can change a region's rate, its hours requirement and both ends of its column. Every regional figure on this site is stamped with the period it belongs to, which is why you keep seeing August 9 to September 5, 2026 beside them, and the whole table is archived each cycle.

The Act ties your weeks to "the regional rate of unemployment that applies to the claimant", and Service Canada is the body that applies it to your file. If your region's published rate moves after you have applied, ask Service Canada what that means for your claim rather than reading a new number off a table and assuming it changes an established one. This site does not predict claim decisions.