Gradation for earnings-related unemployment allowances approved by the Finnish Parliament

Parliament has approved the remaining part of the law amendments planned for this year to affect unemployment security. Among other, the most recent law amendment package enables gradation for earnings-related unemployment allowances. Initially, gradation will affect all receivers of earnings-related unemployment allowance, entrepreneurs included.

Gradation for earnings-related unemployment allowances means that future unemployment security amounts will be reduced as follows

• to 80 % of the original amount, once unemployment benefits have been paid 40 days and further
• to 75 % of the original amount once, unemployment benefits have been paid 170 days.

Earnings-related daily allowance is paid for a maximum of five days per week, so 40 benefit days means about two months and 170 benefit days about eight months.

Earnings-related unemployment allowances will be gradated in case the work requirement, based on which earnings-related daily allowance is paid, can comprise work in accordance with the new eurorised model for September 2024 or later. For entrepreneurs, this means that business operations must have ended, and unemployment must have started as of September 2, 2024 or later.

The change does not affect daily allowance periods already started.

We will include gradation in our daily allowance calculator in autumn.

Wage-earners’ work requirements to be extended, work requirement to become income-based

In addition to gradation, wage-earners’ work requirement will be extended from present six months to 12 months starting September. Wage-earners’ work requirement will also be eurorised, i.e., based on income. In the future, wage-earners’ entitlement to daily allowance will be assessed based on salary earned before unemployment, not on actual work hours.