Employment Insurance in Nunavut (2026): Iqaluit and the rest of the territory

Nunavut is two Employment Insurance regions: Iqaluit and the rest of the territory. For the period August 9 to September 5, 2026, Iqaluit sits at 6.1% unemployment and asks 665 hours of insurable work, paying from 15 weeks to 38 weeks. The rest of Nunavut sits at 14.5%, asks 420 hours, and pays from 28 weeks to 45 weeks, so even a claim built on the qualifying minimum starts well above the shortest claim the Act produces. The weekly amount is federal and the same everywhere, 55% of your average weekly insurable earnings up to $729.00 per week, 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 set to Nunavut. Choose your region, enter your insurable hours from the last 52 weeks and what you averaged in your best-paid weeks, and it checks the hours and works out the amount.

Nunavut's two 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 belong to the period in the caption and to no other. The official table is republished on a four-week cycle and this page is rebuilt from it each time.

Iqaluit and the other communities

Iqaluit is a region of its own. The second row, which carries the territory's name, means Nunavut outside the capital: Rankin Inlet, Arviat, Baker Lake, Cambridge Bay, Igloolik, Pond Inlet, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and the rest of the communities across the Kitikmeot, Kivalliq and Qikiqtaaluk.

The region on your claim is the one you ordinarily live in when the benefit period starts. It is not where the work was. That distinction does real work in a territory where people take rotations at a mine site, seasonal contracts in another community or a term with an employer whose office is in the south. Those hours are insurable hours and they count in full; the rate applied to them follows your home address.

What a high regional rate does to a claim

Three things move with the regional rate, and outside Iqaluit they all move in your favour.

Fewer hours to qualify. The scale in s. 7(2) of the Employment Insurance Act 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 Iqaluit asks 665 hours and the rest of the territory asks 420 hours.

A smaller divisor, which usually means a bigger cheque. The weekly benefit is your best-paid weeks added up and divided by a number the Act fixes for your region, from 22 down to 14 (EI Act s. 14). Iqaluit divides by 21 this period and the rest of Nunavut by 14. Spreading the same earnings over fewer weeks raises the average, so a smaller divisor is the better one to have. The catch is the same everywhere: if you have fewer weeks with earnings than the divisor, it is used anyway.

More weeks, starting from a higher floor. The number of weeks comes from Schedule I, read at your insurable hours in the column for your region's rate (EI Act, Schedule I). This period a claim outside Iqaluit runs from 28 weeks at the qualifying minimum to 45 weeks with a full year of hours, against 15 weeks to 38 weeks in the capital. The Act's own range across the whole country is 14 weeks to 45 weeks, so the floor outside Iqaluit sits well up that range rather than at the bottom of it.

How the rate itself is worked out in the territories

The three territories are treated differently from the provinces when the rate is calculated. The footnote to the official table says the rate used for a territory is the higher of a three-month and a twelve-month moving average (EI economic regions table). In labour markets this small, one project or one closure can swing a short average sharply, and taking the higher of the two keeps the requirement steadier from one four-week period to the next.

A worked example: Joanna, laid off in Rankin Inlet

Joanna's term with a contractor ended and was not renewed. She lives outside the capital, so her row is the second one. In the 52 weeks before her claim she had 640 insurable hours, and her best weeks averaged $1,180. Both numbers are invented; the arithmetic follows the Act.

• Hours. Her region asks 420 hours this period and she has 640, so she qualifies. Hours from every insurable job in the period are added together.
• Weekly amount. 55% of $1,180 is $649.00 a week before tax, still under the ceiling of $729.00 per week. The ceiling starts to apply at an average of $1,325.00 a week, the maximum insurable earnings of $68,900.00 per year spread over a year.
• The divisor. Her best weeks are divided by 14 this period, which is why a short run of well-paid weeks holds its value better here than it would in a low-unemployment region.
• Weeks. Schedule I places her between 28 weeks and 45 weeks for her region this period, and the estimator above reads the exact cell from her hours.

What is different about EI right now

Three temporary measures are in force across the country. Two of them contradict the standard advice about being laid off: at the moment the first week of a claim is not unpaid, and money paid because the job ended is not holding benefits back.

Read the end date and go by it. The measures have been extended more than once, and each extension was a decision that had to be made; nothing here assumes another. A benefit period that begins on or before that date is treated as above. One that begins after it is not.

Severance, pay in lieu and the start of a claim

The permanent rule sits in s. 36 of the EI Regulations: money paid because the job ended counts as earnings, and it is spread over the weeks after your last day at the rate of a normal working week, so benefits do not begin until it is used up (EI Regulations s. 36). The delay is to the start of payments; the number of weeks in the claim is untouched.

That allocation is suspended while the temporary measure lasts, so a payout does not currently push a Nunavut claim back. What your employer owes you when the job ends is a matter of territorial law rather than federal law, and the Nunavut termination pay page works through the notice, the pay in lieu and the vacation pay with a calculator.

Apply as soon as the work ends, whatever is still outstanding. Service Canada's guidance is to apply within 4 weeks Secondary source of your last day worked. A late claim is backdated only where you would have qualified on the earlier day and had good cause for the whole delay (EI Act s. 10).