Social Security - Unemployment Benefits

Unemployment Benefits: Beneficiaries and Conditions for Entitlement: If you lose your job, you can claim unemployment benefit. However, certain conditions are attached to this. For example, you must have worked for at least half a year in the Netherlands. The amount and duration of your benefit depend on your employment history. After you lose your job, you must register as quickly as possible with the Centre for Work and Income (CWI).

If you lose your job as an employee, in theory you are entitled to claim unemployment benefit. However, you must be younger than 65 and the loss of your job must not be imputable to your conduct.

The Unemployment Benefits Act (WW) applies to all employees who are insured in the Netherlands. In theory, employees in sheltered employment are also insured. The same applies, under certain conditions, to sales representatives, outworkers, musicians and performing artists.

Self-employed persons and personnel who work for less than three days a week in the same private household are not insured. The same applies to trainees who do not receive a full salary.

Unemployment benefit totals 70 percent of your last-earned salary (N.B. There is, however, a maximum daily pay). The length of your entitlement to this benefit depends on your employment history. You calculate this by means of an addition. You take the number of years within the above-mentioned period of five years in which you received your salary. You then calculate how many years have elapsed since the year you reached 18 years of age (including that year) until the start of the five-year period. By adding this up, you obtain your employment history.
Using the following table, you can calculate the length of your salary-related benefit.

Employment history of at least: Duration of salary-related benefit

• 4 years 6 months
• 5-9 years 9 months
• 10-14 years 1 year
• 15-19 years 1.5 years
• 20-24 years 2 years
• 25-29 years 2.5 years
• 30-34 years 3 years
• 35-39 years 4 years
• 40 years or over 5 years

Source: European Union
© European Communities, 1995-2006
Reproduction is authorised.