The record of employment (ROE): who issues it, when, and how to read it (2026)

The record of employment, the ROE, is the document your employer produces when your work stops or your pay is interrupted, and it is the document Service Canada builds your Employment Insurance claim from. It carries the insurable hours you worked, the insurable earnings you were paid and the reason the work ended. You do not fill it in and you do not send it: your employer issues it, in most cases electronically, straight to Service Canada. You also do not need it in your hands to apply, and waiting for it is one of the most expensive mistakes a laid-off worker can make. How the claim itself works is on the EI page.

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

What the record of employment actually is

Think of it as the payroll side of your claim. Almost everything Service Canada decides about a claim for regular benefits comes from three things: how many insurable hours you have, what you were paid in your best weeks, and why the work stopped. The ROE is where all three arrive, straight from your employer's payroll records, without you being asked to prove them.

That is why it matters so much and why so little of it is in your control. Your application says who you are and what happened. The record says what the payroll system recorded. Where the two disagree, the claim stalls until the difference is sorted out.

One record is issued for each job. If you worked for three employers in the 52 weeks before your claim, three records are involved, and the hours on all of them are added together. A job you left months ago can be the one that carries you over your region's requirement, so it is worth chasing a missing record even for work that feels irrelevant.

Who issues it, and how it reaches Service Canada

Your employer issues it. Not you, not your union, not your lawyer. The obligation sits with the employer whenever there is an interruption of earnings, which covers being laid off, being dismissed, quitting, and also stopping work without the job ending, for illness or a leave.

Most employers now file electronically, and an electronic record goes directly to Service Canada. If yours does, no paper copy is produced for you at all, and there is nothing to bring anywhere. You can see the records filed under your name through your My Service Canada Account. An employer who still issues on paper has to give you a copy for your own records, and Service Canada will tell you what to do with it if it is needed.

Either way, the claim is what triggers the use of the record, not the other way around. Apply, and let the document catch up.

When it has to be issued

The Employment Insurance Regulations set the deadline, and it runs from the interruption of earnings rather than from anything your employer decides. On paper, your copy and the Commission's copy go out within 5 days of the later of two dates: the first day of the interruption of earnings, and the day your employer learns of it. Filed electronically, which is how most employers file, the record goes to the Commission within 5 days of the end of the pay period the first day fell in, or, where the employer runs 13 or fewer pay periods a year, within 15 days of that first day, whichever comes first (EI Regulations s. 19).

What is worth knowing beyond the deadline is the practical rule. The deadline is short, and it is the employer's obligation whether or not you ask for the record, whether or not you are on good terms on the way out, and whether or not anything is still being negotiated. An employer who is holding the record back until a settlement is signed is not doing you a favour.

The three parts of the record that decide your claim

The reason the work ended

The record carries a code with a short description for why the job stopped, and it is the single line your employer writes that can cost you the claim. The everyday cases are a shortage of work, which covers layoffs and the end of a contract or a season, quitting, and dismissal.

A shortage of work is the ordinary route into regular benefits and raises no question by itself. A record that says you quit, or that you were dismissed, sends the claim to a decision instead. Section 30 of the Employment Insurance Act disqualifies a claimant who left without just cause or lost the job through misconduct, until enough insurable hours are worked again (EI Act s. 30), and s. 29(c) lists the circumstances that can amount to just cause. Neither is decided by what your employer typed. Service Canada asks both sides and decides, and you can ask for a reconsideration and then appeal. The test and what it means for you are set out on the page on quitting and misconduct.

The lesson is not to argue with your employer about the code. It is to apply, give your account of what happened when you are asked, and keep whatever documents you have.

Total insurable hours

This is the figure your region's requirement is measured against. The table in s. 7(2) of the 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), and the hours counted are the ones inside your qualifying period, normally the 52 weeks before the claim (EI Act s. 8).

Hours, not weeks and not shifts. Overtime hours count. Paid hours from a second job count. Hours reported by different employers are added together. If the total on your record looks low against what you actually worked, that is the number to question, because it is the number that decides whether there is a claim at all.

Total insurable earnings, by pay period

The record breaks your earnings down period by period, and that breakdown is what the weekly benefit is built from. The Act pays 55% of your average weekly insurable earnings in your best-paid weeks, capped at $729.00 per week (EI Act s. 14), and the number of best weeks averaged runs from 22 where regional unemployment is lowest to 14 where it is highest.

Two things follow. Weeks with little or no pay pull the average down, because if you have fewer weeks with earnings than the divisor, it is used anyway. And earnings above the annual maximum of $68,900.00 per year are not insured, so they are not on the record as insurable and never reach the calculation.

The figures your record is measured against

Everything above is read against one short list of parameters, all of them federal and all of them the same wherever you work. This is that list, with the section each figure comes from.

Only two things on a claim are local: the regional rate of unemployment, which sets the hours you need and the number of best weeks averaged, and the number of weeks Schedule I gives you. Both come from the economic region you live in, and both are on the province and territory pages.

Separation money on the record, and what is different right now

The record also reports money paid because the job ended: pay in lieu of notice, severance, unused vacation pay. Under the permanent rule in s. 36 of the EI Regulations that money is earnings, and it is spread over the weeks after your last day at the rate of a normal working week, so benefits start only once it runs out (EI Regulations s. 36). That is why the amounts belong on the record at all.

While the measure lasts, those amounts do not push your claim back. Report them anyway, on the record and on your own reports: what changes is the treatment, not the duty to declare. What your employer has to pay you when the job ends, and by when, is employment standards rather than EI, and it is worked out jurisdiction by jurisdiction from the severance and termination pay hub.

If the record never arrives

Apply first. The date you apply is what protects your weeks, not the date the paperwork lands, and Service Canada can open a claim and follow the document up with your employer. Service Canada's guidance is to apply within 4 weeks Secondary source of your last day worked, and a late claim is backdated only if you would have qualified on the earlier day and had good cause throughout the delay (EI Act s. 10).

Then do these three things, in this order.

1. Check your My Service Canada Account. An electronic record may already be filed and sitting there, which is the most common answer to "my employer never sent it".
2. Ask your employer in writing. Short and factual: the job, the last day worked, a request for the record to be issued. Keep a copy. If the employer has gone under or simply will not answer, say so on your claim.
3. Send what you have instead. Pay stubs, a T4 slip, a letter of employment, a contract, bank records of pay going in. Service Canada can work from proof of employment and earnings while it pursues the record, and it can require an employer to produce one.

What you should not do is sit on the application. Nothing about waiting improves the claim, and every week you wait is a week that can be lost outright.

If the record is wrong

Two kinds of error are worth acting on. The first is the numbers: hours or earnings that do not match what you worked and were paid. Take your pay stubs to Service Canada and to your employer's payroll, because an amended record can be issued and hours are the difference between a claim and no claim.

The second is the reason for separation. A record that says you quit when you were let go, or that alleges misconduct, does not settle anything, but it does put your claim in front of a decision-maker. Give your version plainly, in writing, with dates. Service Canada decides, and if the decision goes against you, you can ask for a reconsideration and then appeal. This site never predicts how that decision will come out, and neither should anyone else.