If self-employment constitutes subsidiary work, the TE Office will assess your self-employment activities to determine how it affects your ability to accept a new salaried job. If you have a long history of simultaneous salaried work and self-employment, then self-employment is usually regarded as subsidiary work. In this case, earnings-related daily allowance may be paid, adjusted for the income earned from self-employment activities. If your history of simultaneous salaried and self-employment is very short, self-employment may be deemed a full-time activity, in which case no earnings-related daily allowance is paid. This applies even if your full-time salaried employment has ended. The TE Office is required to examine each situation individually, which is why issuing a statement may take some time. 

If you performed subsidiary work as a salaried employee, this is, as a rule, considered simply a matter requiring notification when you register as a job seeker, and the TE Office will not look into your situation in any more detail. Here, at the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund, we will check your situation on the basis of your employment contract/commission for your subsidiary work, but we will not need a labour policy statement from the TE Office in order to process your application. 

What happens if you become employed after your period of unemployment commences? 

If you become self-employed, the TE Office will assess the self-employment activities you launched to determine how it affects your ability to accept a new salaried job. If you have no history of simultaneous self-employment and salaried work, self-employment may be deemed a full-time activity, even if it does not yet – or possibly never will – generate income. The TE Office is required to examine each situation individually, which is why issuing a statement may take some time.

 
If you find a new job as a salaried employee, this is, as a rule, considered a matter requiring notification, and the statement issued by the TE Office will be based on your own notification. The employment effect will not be studied in any more detail. If your job is part-time, you are entitled to adjusted earnings-related allowance. Again, here at the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund, we will check your situation on the basis of your employment contract/commission, but we will not need a labour policy statement from the TE Office in order to process your application. 

Will you benefit from the standard entitlement component of the adjusted earnings-related allowance? 

As of the beginning of 2014, the adjusted earnings-related allowance includes a so-called standard entitlement component. In practice, this means a gross income of no more than EUR 300 per month will not affect your earnings-related daily allowance in the one-month allowance period. 

However, this provision may not apply to you if you become self-employed. If you become self-employed and the TE Office considers your self-employment a full-time activity until further notice, you will not be entitled to any earnings-related daily allowance even if your monthly income regularly remains at or below EUR 300.  
If you find a new job as a salaried employee, you will be entitled to full earnings-related daily allowance if your monthly income does not exceed EUR 300. However, this does not apply if there is no way to monitor your working hours, or if you are in full-time employment on commission. But this is a subject to be addressed another time. 

How to address the issue?

Investigators appointed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment proposed that the first assessment of the level of self-employment activity should be carried out after 4 months. Many other solutions were proposed to address the challenges of combining salaried work and self-employment. More information on the proposals made by the investigators is available in our late December update. 
More information on part-time employment and adjusted allowances is available on our website under the section “Working part-time?”. More information on the assessment of the impacts of self-employment is available from the TE Office.