How does working hours affect earnings-related daily allowance? 

Topics

• Income security
• Part-time job

We get a lot of questions about how working hours affect the adjusted earnings-related daily allowance paid during part-time work. See YTK Unemployment Fund unemployment security expert Julia Laine’s answers to questions.

When you are paid for part-time work, you may also be entitled to adjusted earnings-related daily allowance.  

Your working hours determine whether or not your work is part-time. Thus, your working hours also determine whether we can pay you adjusted earnings-related daily allowance. 

In unemployment security, part-time work is defined in relation to the working hours of a full-time employee. 

• Full-time work: working hours have been agreed to exceed 80 percent of the maximum working hours for a full-time employee. In this case, we cannot pay you the agreed daily allowance.

• Part-time work: working hours have been agreed to be 80 percent or less of the maximum working hours of a full-time employee. In this case, we can pay you the agreed daily allowance.

You can check the terms of your employment relationship and your working hours from your employment contract. If you have only agreed on an employment relationship orally, you can check these with your employer.  

Note! If your employment is originally agreed to be part-time, it will not turn into full-time even if you do more hours at times or even work full-time. However, we may not be able to pay adjusted earnings-related daily allowance every month if the hours you work exceed the 80% limit or your income rises so high that it prevents payment.

As a rule, we check your working hours from the employment contract. However, if your working hours are implemented continuously and over a long period of time in a different way than agreed in the employment contract, we can ask your employer for further clarification and check whether, for example, your working hours have been permanently changed. 

You can apply for adjusted earnings-related daily allowance for a period of one month or four consecutive calendar weeks.  

Please note that the pay dates that apply to the application period will determine which hours of work we will take into account when reviewing your entitlement to adjusted earnings-related daily allowance. So it does not matter from the point of view of the adjusted earnings-related daily allowance when you have done the work, but when you have been paid for the work you have done.

How do I know the maximum working hours in my field? 

The maximum working hours of a full-time employee in their own field depends on the applicable collective agreement. If your work is not subject to a collective agreement, the maximum working hours are based on the law. The regular working hours specified by law are 8 hours/day and 40 hours/week. 

According to the law, the maximum working time per day is changed to the maximum working time of the month by using a coefficient of 21,5. If your application period is four consecutive calendar weeks instead of a month, the coefficient is 20. Thus, the maximum working time is always calculated using these coefficients. Thus, for example, the number of actual working days in a month does not matter when calculating the maximum working time.

How will my daily allowance change if my working hours vary weekly or monthly?

The amount of adjusted daily allowance changes if your working hours and the amount of wages paid for it also change. The adjusted earnings-related daily allowance can be paid when your working hours do not exceed 80 per cent of the working hours of a full-time employee.

Note! Even though your working hours vary in part-time work, you should still apply for adjusted daily allowance for the entire duration of your employment relationship. This is because we check your entitlement to adjusted daily allowance separately for each application period.  

In addition, the amount of adjusted earnings-related daily allowance has an upper limit, i.e. a maximum amount. This maximum amount depends on what your income level was before unemployment or lay-off. If you earn a lot, no adjusted earnings-related daily allowance necessarily remains to be paid at all.

What happens if I report my working hours incorrectly when applying for earnings-related daily allowance? Will there be any sanctions? 

In connection with the application process, we will check that the hours you have reported correspond to the salary paid to you. If we find any discrepancies in the information, we will contact you and ask for further information. When your application is still waiting for its processing turn, you can also correct the hourly data of the application yourself at OmaYTK.  

Remember that a negative decision on an earnings-related daily allowance application will not be spent, for example, on the maximum payment period of the adjusted earnings-related daily allowance.

Do I need to send attachments when applying for adjusted earnings-related daily allowance?

When you start a new part-time job, it is a good idea to send a new employment contract as an attachment to the application. As a rule, income data is obtained from the Incomes Register.

What else do I need to take into account when applying for earnings-related daily allowance?  

Holiday hours of annual leave earned from part-time work are also taken into account when calculating the limit of working hours. We may also need to ask you for salary calculations in connection with part-time annual leave, as the Incomes Register does not specify the time and holiday pay. 

If you are on an annual holiday earned from part-time work and are unsure about marking holidays for your application or do not know how many holiday hours you have been paid holiday pay for, you can submit a pay slip with your holiday pay attached to the application. In that case, the handler of your application will calculate your holiday hour when they process your application.