Employment Insurance in New Brunswick (2026): three regions, three different answers

New Brunswick is split into three Employment Insurance regions, and they are further apart than most people expect. For the period August 9 to September 5, 2026, Madawaska-Charlotte sits at 5.4% unemployment and asks 700 hours of insurable work to qualify, while Restigouche-Albert sits at 10.3% and asks 525 hours. The city region, Fredericton-Moncton-Saint John, asks 665 hours. Everything after qualifying works the same way it does anywhere in Canada, at 55% of your average weekly insurable earnings up to $729.00 per week, which is set out on the EI page.

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

The estimator above is already set to New Brunswick. Pick your region, put in the insurable hours from your last 52 weeks and what you averaged in your best weeks, and it will tell you whether you have the hours and what a week is worth.

The three New Brunswick regions this period

Source: EI Program Characteristics (economic regions, rates, hours and weeks). Table for the period August 9 to September 5, 2026; it is replaced every four weeks.

Those figures hold for August 9 to September 5, 2026 and no longer. Service Canada re-publishes the table on a four-week cycle, this page is rebuilt from it, and the period is stamped on the table so you can tell at a glance whether you are looking at current numbers.

The region names are pairs, and the halves are not neighbours

New Brunswick's regions are named after two places each, and the two places are usually at opposite ends of the province. That is why guessing your region from the name almost never works.

• Fredericton-Moncton-Saint John is the urban region: the three cities and the built-up areas around them, running down the Saint John River valley and across to the Petitcodiac.
• Madawaska-Charlotte joins the northwest corner along the Madawaska and the Saint John River to Charlotte County in the far southwest, on the Maine border. Edmundston is in it and so is St. Stephen, and there is a province between them.
• Restigouche-Albert takes in the north and east shores, the Restigouche, the Acadian Peninsula and the Miramichi, together with Albert County in the southeast.

Your region is the one you ordinarily live in when your benefit period starts, not the one you worked in. Somebody who lives in Sackville and drives into Moncton claims in the region where they live. Service Canada publishes the boundaries by postal code, and a postal code near a line is worth looking up rather than guessing.

What the spread between the regions actually costs

Two rules move with the regional unemployment rate, and both of them bite hardest in the region with the lowest rate.

The first is the qualifying requirement in s. 7(2) of the Employment Insurance Act, which runs from 700 hours of insurable work where regional unemployment is lowest down to 420 hours where it is highest (EI Act s. 7). This period Madawaska-Charlotte asks 700 hours and Restigouche-Albert asks 525 hours, several steps apart on the same scale. A seasonal job of the same length can be enough on one side of a boundary and short on the other.

The second is the divisor. The weekly benefit is built from your best-paid weeks in the qualifying period, divided by a number the Act fixes for your region, from 22 where unemployment is lowest to 14 where it is highest (EI Act s. 14). Madawaska-Charlotte divides by 22 this period and Restigouche-Albert divides by 17. If you have fewer weeks with earnings than the divisor, the Act still divides by it, so unpaid gaps drag the average down, and they drag it down further where that number is larger.

The number of weeks moves too. This period the range in Restigouche-Albert runs from 21 weeks at the qualifying minimum to 45 weeks with a full year of hours, and in Madawaska-Charlotte from 14 weeks to 36 weeks. Those are not separate regional rules: they are cells of Schedule I of the Act, read at the region's rate (EI Act, Schedule I).

A worked example: Luc, laid off on the north shore

Luc lives near Campbellton, in Restigouche-Albert, and his employer shut the line down for the season. In the 52 weeks before his claim he had 610 insurable hours, and his best weeks averaged $760. The pay and the hours are invented; the arithmetic is not.

• Hours. His region asks 525 hours this period, and he has 610, which clears it. Every insurable hour counts, including overtime and a second job.
• Weekly amount. 55% of $760 is $418.00 a week before tax, comfortably under the ceiling of $729.00 per week.
• Weeks. Schedule I crosses his hours with his region's rate. For Restigouche-Albert this period that lands somewhere between 21 weeks and 45 weeks, and the estimator above works out the exact cell from his hours.

Change one thing and the test changes. Move Luc to Madawaska-Charlotte with the same 610 hours and those hours are measured against 700 hours instead, because that is what the region asks this period. Same job, same year, different address, different bar. Compare the two figures on the table above before you assume anything.

What is different about EI right now

Three temporary measures are running across the country, and they overturn two things most articles about layoffs still say: that the first week of a claim is unpaid, and that severance holds up your benefits. Neither is true today, and both come back when the measures end.

Take the end date at face value. The measures have been extended before, but each extension is a decision the government has to make, and nothing here assumes another one. If your benefit period begins on or before that date, this is the treatment you get. After it, the permanent rules apply again.

Severance, pay in lieu and when EI starts

The permanent rule is in s. 36 of the EI Regulations. Money paid because the job ended, whether the cheque is labelled severance, pay in lieu of notice or unused vacation pay, counts as earnings and is spread over the weeks after your last day at the rate of a normal working week, so benefits do not begin until it runs out (EI Regulations s. 36). It pushes the start date back; it does not reduce the number of weeks you can draw.

While the temporary measure lasts, that treatment is switched off, so a New Brunswicker paid several weeks of notice can draw benefits from the beginning of the claim anyway. What your employer has to pay you when the job ends, and by when, is a question for New Brunswick's employment standards law rather than the EI Act, and it is worked out on the New Brunswick termination pay page.

Apply as soon as the job ends, whatever is still being negotiated. Service Canada's guidance is to apply within 4 weeks Secondary source of your last day worked. A claim filed late is backdated only if you would have qualified on the earlier day and had good cause for the whole delay (EI Act s. 10), so waiting for a settlement or for a record of employment can cost weeks that nobody gives back.