
Maximum payment period coming to an end?
Petja Eklund, Senior Expert
The duration of earnings-related daily allowance, or the daily allowance period, is either 300, 400 or 500 days, depending on your situation. What will happen when these days come to an end?
Passing of the daily allowance period
Each full daily allowance paid shall reduce the maximum payment period by one day. We pay daily allowance for a maximum of five days per calendar week. So, at most five days of the maximum period are used, even if there are seven days in a week.
The maximum payment period passes differently if we pay you adjusted daily allowance. That may be the case if you are in part-time employment or practise part-time entrepreneurial activities. In those cases, the adjusted daily allowance shall be converted to correspond with full daily allowance before it is deducted from the maximum payment period. In practice it means that when you work part-time or practise part-time entrepreneurial activities, the maximum payment period passes more slowly compared to completely unemployed or completely laid off persons. No such slowing factor exists, if a social security benefit has been deducted from full daily allowance.
For some time, it will be possible for us to pay daily allowance even after the expiration of the maximum payment period, if you are entitled to additional days.
In OmaYTK you can check on how many days you have received daily allowance and how many days of the maximum payment period are left.
Expiration of the daily allowance period
You need not estimate the expiration of the maximum payment period. Submit your applications as per normal, and when the maximum payment period is up, we will send you a separate decision on it.
If the employment or lay-off continues, you can apply for labour market subsidy from Kela. You will need to attach our decision on the expiration of the maximum payment period to your application. You should also remember to notify the TE Office that the payer of your benefit will change. Then the TE Office can send the required statements to the right place.
In such a situation the change is that you will no longer receive earnings-related daily allowance, but labour market subsidy from Kela. The amount of labour market subsidy is the same as basic daily allowance i.e., € 33.78 per day.
New daily allowance period
When you fulfil the condition regarding employment, the maximum payment period will always start over from the beginning. So, you will be entitled to receive earnings-related daily allowance again once you have fulfilled the condition regarding employment again. The condition regarding employment can be accumulated over time even in shorter periods. The condition regarding employment may be fulfilled even if the maximum payment period has not expired. Also, in such a case the maximum payment period will start from the beginning.
As the new condition regarding employment may also be accumulated during the earnings-related daily allowance period, it is possible that you already have almost the required number of weeks at the expiration of the maximum payment period. For example, if you have accumulated 25 weeks for the condition regarding employment, you will need just one more week to fulfil the condition regarding employment. So even if your maximum payment period expires, it will not reset the weeks accumulated for the condition regarding employment up to then. Instead, the review period for the condition regarding employment is 28 months, which means that the condition regarding employment may include work done at most 28 months ago. So, the older employment periods may expire from the condition regarding employment. There are also exceptions to that rule, including studying, military service, and parental leave, which will extend the said review period.
If you want to know how much you have accumulated the condition regarding employment, you can contact our customer service. We only have details of the employment you have notified to us in applications. That is why we may not necessarily be able to tell exactly the number of weeks accumulated for your condition regarding employment. Typically, it can, however, be estimated quite reliably. Ultimately, we can ask you to send an application and the required details on employment. Based on that we can then calculate your accumulated condition regarding employment.

Petja Eklund, Senior Expert