Claiming allowance

The daily allowance must be applied for within 3 months of the date from which the daily allowance is to be paid. If your application is about to expire because you are unable to compile the necessary attachments, you can send your application incomplete and complete it later.

Waiting for the statement from the employment authority or waiting for attachments from the employer, are not such a particularly compelling reasons, that the daily allowance could be paid despite the delay in the application.

Claims for benefit are always made retroactively. 

Submit your first application for daily allowance via eService after you have been laid-off for two weeks. 

Exceptions:

• If your lay off lasts less than two weeks, you can send an application as soon as your unemployment ends.
• If your unemployment lasts less than one month, apply for daily allowance for the whole period in one go. 
   

If you have been laid off by shortening your working week (i.e. you are not laid off for a full week), you must always fill in the application form for the entire calendar week (Mon – Sun).

Exampel: You have been laid off from Tuesday to Thursday. The lay-off doesn´t last a full calendar week, so it is considered a lay-off for a shortened work week. Fill in the application from Monday until Sunday. You can send the application to the fund no earlier than Sunday.

If your lay-off continues, you can apply for a daily allowance 

• in periods of four calendar weeks (Monday to Sunday), or
• monthly (according to the calendar month or, for example, from the 10th of the current month to the 9th of the next month).

If you are laid off full-time and the last weekday of your first application was a Sunday, the fund, as a rule, marks the rhythm of follow-up applications as 4 weeks. In other case, the rhythm is marked as monthly.

If you are not fully laid off but your working hours have been reduced due to a layoff, or if you work for an employer other than the one that laid you off during the layoff period, the application schedule for the daily allowance will follow your pay cycle:

• If your salary is paid once or twice a month (for example 15. and 31. day of the month), send applications monthly.
• If your salary is paid every two or four weeks, send applications in periods of 4 weeks.

Always complete your application for a full calendar week (Monday to Sunday) if your layoff has been implemented by reducing your weekly working hours (i.e., you are only laid off on certain days rather than for the entire calendar week). In cases of reduced working weeks, working hours are assessed on a calendar-week basis. Therefore, we require information on all hours worked during the entire week, even if your application period starts or ends in the middle of the week.

If you work during lay-off, please note the following:

• In your application, please report the hours worked for each employer separately. Do not round off your working time to the nearest hour or half hour.
• In your application, please indicate any paid days off, such as midweek public holidays and holidays.
• In your application, please also indicate any unpaid days of absence. 

We need information on the hours worked, for example to calculate the mandatory waiting period and to check the working time limit for adjusted daily allowance. We also need the information to decide whether you are entitled to a benefit. You are not entitled to daily allowance for a day of unpaid absence taken at your own request.

If your layoff lasts no more than 7 working days and you have never been laid off or unemployed before, you do not need to send a benefit application to the unemployment fund. A 7-day waiting period is applied at the start of the lay-off, during which no unemployment allowance is paid. Sending an application to the fund would therefore not benefit you.

The waiting period is always applied when the employment condition is met. So, even if you meet the employment condition again after your previous unemployment period, applying for benefits for a period of no more than 7 days is still not beneficial. The length of the employment condition is 12 months.

The waiting period must be completed within 8 calendar weeks (Monday to Sunday). Your lay-off must therefore amount to at least 7 working days in total within 8 calendar weeks, in order to avoid a new 7-day waiting period being set for a later lay-off or unemployment period.

Example:
Lay-off from February 23 to March 1, 2026 (5 working days) and from April 20 to April 26, 2026 (5 working days). The lay-off periods do not fall within 8 calendar weeks, so the 7-day waiting period cannot be fully met. Only 5 days from April 20 to 26 can be counted toward the waiting period. If the lay-off continues for at least 2 more days from April 27, 2026 to June 14, 2026, the 7-day waiting period will be fulfilled.

The 7-day waiting period does not expire, so you can include the days of your first short lay-off in a later application if your lay-off continues or if you are laid off again. Note, however, that even though the 7 -day waiting period does not expire, unemployment benefits can only be paid retroactively for up to three months. Please note that although the waiting period does not expire, unemployment allowance can only be paid retroactively for a maximum of three months. You must also have been registered as an unemployed jobseeker in the Employment Authority’s e-service in order for the allowance to be paid or for the waiting period to be counted.

You should apply for unemployment allowance even after a layoff of just a few days if

• you have been unemployed or laid off within the past year, or
• it is clear that your employment condition is not fulfilled again after your previous unemployment period, or
• your lay-off will last longer than 7 working days.

If you are unsure whether you should apply for unemployment allowance, You can always ask for advice by sending a message through eService or by calling us. If you prefer, you may also submit an application to the fund just in case.