Period-based work 

In period-based work (jaksotyö) the working hours vary from day to day but are arranged so that in a three-week or a six-week period the total hours worked correspond to the working hours agreed in the employment contract. If you work is period-based, all weeks that are included in a three- or six-week period during which the average working time is at least 18 hours per week, can be counted as working weeks.

Reduced income due to an illness

Weeks are not included in the work requirement for a period for which you have received

• partial sickness allowance from Kela or
• reduced salary du to an illness (e.g. 2/3 salary)

Pay subsidy

If your employer receives a pay subsidy from TE Office for employing you, only 75 % of your working weeks will be included in the work requirement. This means that to fulfil the 26 week work requirement, you need to work in employment with pay subsity for at least 35 calendar weeks. If your employment wiht pay subsity has been arrenged due to statutory employment obligation (i.e your are at least 60 years old when your employment starts), all working weeks will be included in the work requirement.

Working time bank

Working hours that has been saved to a working time bank, are not included in the work requirement. Instead, if you have taken time off based on time saved in a working time bank, the free-time is icluded in the work requirement in the same way as paid vacation.

Working as a teacher

If your work as a teacher in a educational institution, working weeks are included in the work requirement if you work at least 8 hours per week.

Working in a family business

If you work in a business owned by your spouse, but you do not own any part of the business yourself, you are considered to be an empoyee (and not a entrepreneur). However, the work requirement is only fulfilled when you work at least 52 weeks (instead of the normal 26 weeks). The normal 26 weeks work requirement and the 52 weeks work requirement for work done in a family business, cannot be added together. The work requirement must threfore be met either in normal paid employment (26 weeks) or working in a family business (52 weeks).

You may lose the right to allowance you acquired working as employee in the following situations

• You work as a full-time entrepreneur for more than 18 months.
• You are out of the labour market (i.e. not employed or registered as
  a job-seeker with the TE office) for more than six months without an
  acceptable reason.
• When you change from unemployment fund to another, there is a break of more than a month between the memberships of the old and the new fund (during which time you are not a member of either fund).

In the above-mentioned situations, the work requirement expires, and you will not be entitled to earnings-related allowance until you have fulfilled a new work requirement, ie after at least 26 weeks of paid employment.

When you receive unemployment benefits, the fund monitors the accumulation of your working weeks. Each calendar week in which you have worked for at least 18 hours will accumulate a new employment condition.

When you fulfil the work requirement again, i.e. you have been employed for at least 26 working weeks during the 28-month reference period, the maximum payment period of the 300/400/500-days of earnings-related allowance starts from the beginning.

Read more about the maximum payment period.

A new 5-day waiting period will be taken and the salary on which the allowance is calculated will be recalculated, as a general rule, no more than once a year. 

The amount of allowance is recalculated and a new 5-day waiting period is taken, if you fulfil the new work requirement

• before the daily allowance has been paid for a single day after the previous work requirement was fulfilled or
• within one year from the start of the previous allowance, but no 5-day waiting period was taken and the amount of the allowance was not recalculated the previous time the work requirement was fulfilled or
• over one year from the start of the previous allowance.