Working while on an EI claim: how your earnings are deducted (2026)

You can work while you are drawing regular Employment Insurance benefits, and in almost every case you come out ahead by doing it. Half of what you earn in a benefit week is deducted from that week's benefit, up to a line set near your old weekly earnings. Past that line every dollar is deducted in full. The rule is in s. 19(2) of the Employment Insurance Act; it is permanent, and it applies to a single shift as much as to a steady part-time job. What is not optional is declaring the work.

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

The rule in the Act's own words

"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 there are two zones. Below the line, you keep fifty cents of benefit for every dollar you earn. Above it, benefit comes off dollar for dollar, and earning more stops adding anything until the benefit for that week is gone. This used to be a pilot project. It now sits in the Act itself, so it is not a measure with an end date.

What the line is measured against

"Your weekly insurable earnings" is not this week's pay. It is the same figure your benefit was built on: the average of your best weeks of insurable earnings in the qualifying period, divided by the number of best weeks your region uses. The table below is that divisor, and the how much EI pays page works through how the average is put together.

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 matters because the line moves with the person. Someone whose claim was built on high weekly earnings has a lot of room to work before the dollar-for-dollar zone starts. Someone whose claim was built on part-time earnings hits the line on a couple of shifts.

A worked example

Nadia's claim is built on weekly insurable earnings of $1,000. Her benefit is 55% of that, so $550.00 a week, and her dollar-for-dollar line sits at $900.00.

• A week with no work. She is paid the full $550.00.
• A week where she earns $200. All of it is below the line, so half of it is deducted: $100.00. Her benefit for the week is $450.00, and with the pay she has $650.00 in hand. Working that week left her $100.00 better off.
• A week where she earns $950. The first $900.00 is in the lower zone, so $450.00 comes off. The $50.00 above the line comes off in full. Total deduction $500.00, benefit for the week $50.00, and she ends the week with $1,000.00.

Three things fall out of that. Working is worth doing at every level of earnings: her worst week with work still beats her week without. The value of each extra dollar drops once you cross the line. And the deduction only ever eats the week's benefit: once it is as big as the benefit, nothing is paid for that week, and the arithmetic does not run into the negative.

Declaring the work

Benefits are not paid on trust. You file a report to Service Canada every two weeks, and each report asks whether you worked and what you earned. Three habits keep a claim clean.

• Report gross, not net. The amount before deductions is what the calculation uses.
• Report the week you did the work, not the week you were paid. Earnings are allocated to the period the work was done in, which is why a cheque that arrives late still belongs to the earlier week. Source: EI Regulations s. 36.
• Report everything, including the small weeks. Undeclared earnings turn into an overpayment you have to pay back, and a violation on your file raises the number of insurable hours you need to qualify next time.

If a week turns out to have been reported wrong, the fix is to tell Service Canada, not to wait and see whether it is noticed.

Part-time, casual and self-employed work

The sliding scale does not care what shape the work takes. A weekend shift, a week of casual labour, a contract that pays once at the end: each one is earnings in the weeks the work was done, and each one is deducted the same way.

Self-employment is a different animal, and this page does not cover it. Whether a week of running your own business counts as a full working week, and how the money in it is treated, is dealt with separately in the Act and the Regulations, and it is worth asking Service Canada before you start rather than after the first invoice.

The scale changes what is paid in a given week. It does not change the number of weeks Schedule I gave you or the rate behind them, both of which are settled from your hours, your region and your best weeks when the claim is set up. See how many weeks of EI you get. What does run out is the benefit period the weeks have to be taken inside.

The waiting period is its own case

Earnings in the waiting period are handled under a different subsection from the one quoted above, and they are not treated as a normal benefit week. That matters much less than usual right now, because a temporary measure has waived the waiting period altogether for benefit periods beginning on or before October 10, 2026. The waiting period and first payment page has the detail, and the notice below carries the dates.

What is different right now

None of those measures changes the sliding scale itself. Section 19(2) is permanent law and is not part of the package that ends on October 10, 2026.