How Many Weeks of EI Can You Get in 2026? The Exact 14-to-45 Week Table by Hours + Region

The short answer: between 14 and 45 weeks. Where you land inside that range comes down to exactly two numbers — the insurable hours you worked in the 52 weeks before your claim, and the unemployment rate in your EI region on the day you file. At the 2026 maximum benefit of $729 per week, the difference between the 14-week floor and the 45-week ceiling is $22,599. Same program, same premiums paid, wildly different outcomes. And for claims starting on or before October 10, 2026, a temporary measure adds up to 20 more weeks — a 65-week maximum — for long-tenured workers. Here is the actual table, the mechanics behind it, and the traps that quietly shorten a claim.

The 2026 EI Weeks Table: Hours Down the Side, Unemployment Across the Top

Employment and Social Development Canada publishes a 41-row lookup table that maps every combination of insurable hours and regional unemployment rate to a number of weeks. Below is the condensed version with the rows and rate bands that decide most claims. Every figure comes straight from the official ESDC schedule in force for 2026:

Two things jump out of the full table. First, a standard full-time year — 35 hours a week for 52 weeks is 1,820 hours — gets you 36 weeks in a low-unemployment region, not 45. The 45-week maximum is simply not available where the regional rate is 6% or less; with maximum hours, 45 weeks only appears once the regional rate passes 10%. Second, the zeros in the top row are real: 420 hours qualifies you for nothing in most of Canada. More on that below.

The Two Numbers That Set Your Weeks

1. Your insurable hours in the qualifying period

Service Canada counts the insurable hours you accumulated in your qualifying period — the 52 weeks immediately before your claim starts, or the period since the start of your last claim, whichever is shorter. Hours from every insurable job in that window count, which matters for anyone who stacked a part-time job on top of full-time work. What does not count: any hours older than 52 weeks. A 25-year career and a 13-month career produce the same row of the table.

2. Your regional unemployment rate on the day you file

Canada is divided into EI economic regions, each with its own unemployment rate updated monthly by ESDC using Statistics Canada data. Your claim uses the rate for your region in the month you file — and then it is locked. If your regional rate jumps two points the month after you file, your weeks do not increase. If you move from Oshawa to Sudbury mid-claim, your weeks do not change either; ESDC is explicit that the entitlement is fixed once the benefit period begins.

This is the part most people miss: the regional rate moves monthly, so the same layoff can produce different entitlements depending on which month the claim starts. Say the Toronto EI region sits at 7.8% the month you file — 1,820 hours gets you 40 weeks. Had the rate been 6.0% three months earlier, the identical work history would have produced 36 weeks. Four weeks at $729 is $2,916 riding on a number you do not control but can check for free on the Service Canada EI program characteristics lookup before you file.

Why 420 Hours Gets You Zero Weeks in Most of Canada

The 420-hour figure gets quoted constantly as the EI qualifying threshold, and it misleads people every year. The entrance requirement for regular benefits is a sliding scale from 420 to 700 hours, tied to the same regional unemployment rate: the higher your region's rate, the fewer hours you need. At 420 hours you only qualify where unemployment exceeds 13%. In a region at 6% or less — which describes much of southern Ontario in a normal labour market — you need the full 700 hours before you get a single week.

That is why the top row of the table reads 0, 0, 0, 26, 32. The zeros are not missing data; they are regions where 420 hours does not meet the entrance requirement at all. If you are sitting at 600 hours after a contract ended, the difference between filing in a 9.5% region (20 weeks, from the 595–629 row of the full table) and a 6% region (nothing) is the entire claim.

What Your Weeks Are Worth: 55% of Earnings, Up to $729 a Week

Duration is half the equation; the weekly amount is the other half. For 2026, EI pays 55% of your average insurable weekly earnings to a maximum of $729 per week, based on maximum yearly insurable earnings of $68,900 as of January 1, 2026. Anyone earning $68,900 or more hits the same $729 ceiling — a $150,000 director and a $69,000 coordinator receive identical cheques. A steady $60,000 earner receives about $635 per week (55% of $1,154 in weekly earnings).

Your average is calculated from your best weeks — the highest-paid 14 to 22 weeks in your qualifying period, with the divisor again set by your regional rate (best 22 weeks in regions at 6% or less, sliding down to best 14 weeks at 13.1% or higher). Fewer divisor weeks means low-earning weeks drop out of the math, which helps anyone whose final months included reduced hours. Here is what the duration range is worth at the 2026 maximum:

EI is taxable income — tax comes off at source, and a year with six months of salary plus six months of EI can still land you with a balance owing in April. The flip side: a layoff year usually means a much lower net income, which can raise other benefits. Families often see their Canada Child Benefit payments increase the following July, and lower-income households may newly qualify for the GST/HST credit.

One more amount worth knowing: if your net family income is $25,921 or less, you have children, and your household receives the Canada Child Benefit, the EI family supplement can raise your benefit rate to as much as 80% of your average insurable earnings. Only one spouse can receive the supplement at a time, and it phases out completely at the $25,921 income line.

The 52-Week Clock — and the Temporary Measures That Change It Until October 2026

Your weeks of entitlement are not the only constraint. Every claim runs inside a benefit period of 52 weeks, starting when the claim is established — extended by 20 weeks for long-tenured workers receiving the temporary additional weeks. Outside the extension rules, EI is not payable beyond that window, so weeks you do not collect within it are gone. Three rules to check against your claim date:

• The one-week waiting period — currently waived. The first week of a claim is normally unpaid, like an insurance deductible. A temporary measure waives it for all new claims starting between March 30, 2025 and October 10, 2026. Claims starting after that date serve the standard waiting week unless the measure is extended again.
• Severance allocation — currently suspended. Normally severance, vacation pay, and other monies paid on separation are allocated as earnings before EI starts paying. For claims or allocations starting on or before October 10, 2026, that rule is suspended: severance does not delay or reduce your EI. Once the standard rule returns, a 30-week severance package plus a 45-week entitlement no longer fits cleanly inside 52 weeks — which is exactly when claim structure starts costing real money.
• Late filing. Your claim — and the regional rate that locks your weeks — starts when you apply, not when you were laid off. Filing promptly protects both the clock and your hours, since hours older than 52 weeks fall out of the qualifying period.

A note on the temporary measures, because stale 2025 coverage still confuses search results. The original tariff-response package ran March 30 to October 11, 2025 and included a one-point boost to every regional unemployment rate (to a minimum of 7.1%) plus lower hours requirements. The rate boost did expire — the standard table above is what sets a 2026 claim's weeks. But three measures were extended and remain in force for claims starting on or before October 10, 2026: the waiting-period waiver, the suspension of severance allocation, and 20 additional weeks of regular benefits (to a 65-week maximum) for long-tenured workers — those who received fewer than 36 weeks of regular or fishing benefits in the past 3 years and paid at least 30% of the maximum annual EI premium in 7 of the last 10 years. For the levers you control — timing, best-weeks optimization, working-while-on-claim rules — our guide to maximizing EI benefits walks through each one.

Laid Off Near Retirement? Your Weeks Interact With Your Pensions

For workers in their late 50s and 60s, the weeks question is really a bridge question: can EI carry you from the layoff to the day your retirement income starts? A 61-year-old with 36 to 45 weeks of EI has a runway of roughly 8 to 10 months — and a worker with decades of premiums behind them will usually meet the long-tenured test, so a claim filed by October 10, 2026 can stretch to 65 weeks, about 15 months. That changes the math on when to start CPP. Taking CPP early at 60 costs 0.6% per month (a permanent 36% cut at 60), so burning the full EI entitlement first is usually the better sequence. The 2026 figures worth knowing are in our breakdowns of CPP payment amounts and OAS payment amounts. And because EI is taxable income, a layoff year can also affect income-tested programs — lower-income seniors approaching 65 should check the GIS income thresholds before deciding which year to realize severance or RRSP withdrawals.

The Bottom Line: Look Up Your Row Before You Plan Your Runway

Your EI duration is not a mystery and not a negotiation — it is a table lookup. Pull your insurable hours from your records of employment, check your EI region's current unemployment rate on the Service Canada lookup, and read your row. A full-time worker in a low-unemployment region should plan around 36 weeks at up to $729 — about $26,244 — not the 45-week headline number. Someone with 700 hours in that same region should plan around 14 weeks and $10,206. Build the budget on your actual row, check whether the long-tenured top-up applies to you, and watch the calendar: claims starting on or before October 10, 2026 skip the waiting week and collect EI alongside severance, while later claims face the standard waiting week and severance allocation.