Conditions for claiming earnings-related allowance

As a general rule, receiving an earnings-related allowance requires the following:

you are aged between 18 and 64 years (between 65 and 68, unemployment allowance may be paid in certain exceptional circumstances, usually only during layoffs or similar breaks in the operation of the educational institution)
you are seeking full-time employment and have registered as an unemployed jobseeker with the TE Office. Earnings-related allowance may be paid and the waiting period may be taken only for the period in which the job search has been valid and for which the TE Office has issued an eligibility statement.
you have been a member of an unemployment fund for at least 26 weeks
you have met the employment condition during your membership with the fund

If the membership or employment condition is not met, check with Kela if you are entitled to a basic unemployment allowance or labour market subsidy.

Membership and employment condition

Entitlement to an earnings-related allowance may only be incurred if you have been a member of an unemployment fund for at least 26 weeks and you have met the employment condition during your membership.

A key condition for maintaining your membership and claiming earnings-related allowance is that you have paid your membership fee as specified by the rules of the Teachers’ Unemployment Fund. For more information on joining the fund and membership fees, go to Membership.

The employee’s employment condition is met if you have been in paid employment that is subject to unemployment insurance for a minimum of 26 calendar weeks in the 28 months immediately preceding your unemployment, and

your working hours have been at least 18 hours a week (for example, psychologists, early childhood education teachers, researchers, information specialists, trainers) or in the case of teaching in an educational institution, at least 8 hours a week
you have been paid according to the relevant collective agreement or, if there is none, at least EUR 1283 /month for full-time work in 2022 (EUR 1252 in 2021).

The employment condition can accumulate differently in employment in the creative and performing arts sector, during pay-subsidised work, and in an employment promotion service for those over the age of 60 if the service is organised on the basis of employment obligation.

The employment condition can be met from several periods of work (including short substitutions) and can be accumulated by paid employment other than work in your own sector. Paid annual leave may accumulate the employment condition if the working time on which it is based meets the above conditions. As with any other business activity, work done on an assignment basis does not accumulate the employee’s employment condition. If there are more than the minimum number of calendar weeks that accumulate the employment condition, as a rule, the most recent ones will be taken into consideration. Your allowance will be determined based on your earnings for these weeks (see section ‘Amount of earnings-related allowance‘ for more information).

The normal 28-month review period may be extended by a maximum of seven years for an acceptable reason in accordance with the Act on Unemployment Security. In this case, the length of the required membership and employment condition may change.

Earnings-related allowance is paid for a maximum of 300, 400 or 500 days of unemployment (see ‘Payment period of earnings-related allowance’ for more information). The employment condition can also be fulfilled again, restarting the maximum payment period.

You will lose the accumulated employment condition in the following situations:

You are outside the labour market for more than 6 months without an acceptable reason. (Acceptable reasons do not include, for example, independent job-seeking without being registered as a jobseeker with the TE Office, staying abroad without a job or a place of study, or unpaid leave of absence if were not working for another employer or studying during your leave.)
You are self-employed full time for more than 18 months.
You change your unemployment fund and there is a gap of more than one month between your membership in the previous fund and the new fund, during which you are not a member of either fund.

In these situations, the unemployment fund will not be able to pay the daily allowance until you have fulfilled the employment condition again.

Accumulation of the employment condition in the education sector

Entitlement to an earnings-related allowance usually requires that your weekly working hours have amounted to at least 18 hours. Members of our unemployment fund that this working-hour condition applies to include psychologists, researchers, information specialists and early childhood education teachers.

If you work in teaching in an educational institution, the employment condition is accumulated by the calendar weeks during which your working hours were at least half of the lowest weekly hours of a full-time hourly teacher in the relevant education sector. Usually, the limit for being ‘full-time’ is 16 hours, which means that weeks during which the working hours that form the basis of the salary are at least 8 hours can count towards fulfilling the employment condition. The eight-hour limit is also applied to sectors in which there are no full-time hourly teachers.

If you are a teacher with hourly pay, your actual hours are counted. If you are a teacher with a monthly salary, you will be considered as working the number of hours per week on which your monthly salary is based.

Teaching work at an educational institution includes teaching in comprehensive schools, upper secondary schools, vocational institutes, technical institutes, civic education centres, upper secondary schools for adults and universities complying with a collective agreement in the education sector. By contrast, teaching or training carried out in the employment of a company engaged in consultancy and training activities, for example, is not considered teaching work at an educational institution, so it is subject to the 18-hour working time limit.

Accumulation of the employment condition in the creative and performing arts sector

In an employment relationship where the proportion of creative or performing work is decisive, the employment condition can include each calendar week in which the pay resulting from this work corresponds to at least EUR 298,37 (year 2022). Creative and performing arts work includes jobs such as a musician, actor, dancer, director and journalist.

Accumulation of the employment condition in pay-subsidised work and during an employment promotion service

If the pay-subsidised work has begun on 1 January 2017 or later, the pay-subsidised work accumulates the employment condition by 75% of its duration. Therefore, 35 weeks of pay-subsidised work is required to fulfil the 26-week employment condition. An exception to this is when pay-subsidised work is organised on the basis of the employment obligation for the elderly. In this case, pay-subsidised work accumulates the employment condition throughout its duration.

Pay-subsidised work that started before 1 January 2017 accumulates the employment condition throughout its duration. An exception to this is pay-subsidised work that started before 30 December 2013, where the highest increased pay subsidy was paid. In these cases, only half of the working weeks accumulate the employment condition.

To the extent that pay-subsidised work cannot be counted in the employment condition, it will extend the 28-month review period.

The employment condition can accumulate from an employment promotion service only if you have reached the age of 60 and the employment promotion service is organised on the basis of the employment obligation for the elderly.

Extension of the review period and length of the employment condition

The normal 28-month (i.e. 2-year, 4-month) review period may be extended by a maximum of seven years for an acceptable reason in accordance with the Act on Unemployment Security. Acceptable reasons for an extension include full-time studies, sick leave, birth of a child and care of a child up to 3 years of age, military service and civil service. An acceptable reason extends the review period according to its duration (for example, a 5-month parental allowance period extends the 28-month review period to 33 months, so that the period of parental leave is skipped).

If your last week of employment that counted towards the employment condition was before 30 December 2013, the membership and employment condition is 34 calendar weeks.
If your last week of employment that counted towards the employment condition was before 31 December 2009, and you have never received an earnings-related or basic allowance, the membership and employment condition is 43 calendar weeks.

As a general rule, the employment condition cannot be met for example by work during which you were on part-time child-care leave or received a part-time sickness allowance or partial disability pension, or during which you were paid a reduced sick pay. However, such employment may be taken into consideration for the extension of the review period, but only within the last 7 years.

Re-fulfilment of employment condition

The fulfilment of the employment condition is examined when you apply for earnings-related allowance for the first time. After that, the accumulation of the employment condition is monitored based on your applications and the attachments you submit. Your employment condition will be fulfilled again once you have accumulated 26 new weeks of eligible employment after your previous employment condition was fulfilled.

The employment condition can be re-fulfilled through part-time or occasional employment while you are receiving an adjusted allowance. It may also be re-fulfilled if you return to claiming earnings-related allowance after a break. The maximum period of the earnings-related daily allowance starts from the beginning when the employment condition is re-fulfilled. In addition, a waiting period may be set and the allowance level redefined. If you return as an applicant after a break, you must provide your pay and employment information for the period between the applications. If the employment condition is not re-fulfilled, payment of the earnings-related allowance may be continued on the basis of the previous entitlement.

The employment condition may accumulate normally during an employment promotion service, e.g. in part-time work. If the employment condition is re-fulfilled during independent studies or labour market training, the maximum period of earnings-related allowance will not start until the end of the training period. Since it is not possible to renew your entitlement for earnings-related allowance during your training period, it is a good idea to check how far the maximum period will suffice before you start your training. At the end of the maximum period, you can apply for labour market subsidy from Kela.