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🇨🇦 Canada / Ei
Canadian EI premium, maternity, parental, and sickness benefit calculators. 2026 rates: 1.66% employee premium, up to $668/week maximum benefit.
5 calculators
Calculate your Employment Insurance premium deductions for any Canadian salary. See both employee and employer EI premium amounts at the current CRA contribution rate.
Calculate the federal and provincial income tax on Employment Insurance benefits. See your net EI payment after tax clawback for higher income earners.
Calculate maternity EI benefits for Canadian mothers. See weekly payment amount, benefit duration (15 weeks), and how maternity benefits combine with parental leave.
Calculate Canadian parental EI benefits under standard and extended options. Compare 55% for 35 weeks versus 33% for up to 61 weeks to find the best option for your family.
Calculate EI sickness benefits for Canadian workers unable to work due to illness or injury. See your weekly payment amount and eligibility under the current 26-week maximum.
Employment Insurance (EI) is Canada's federal income replacement program, administered by Service Canada under the Employment Insurance Act. For 2024, the employee EI premium rate is 1.66% of insurable earnings, applied on earnings up to the maximum insurable amount of $63,200, resulting in a maximum annual employee premium of $1,049.12. Employers pay 1.4 times the employee rate, meaning 2.324% of insurable payroll per employee, up to $1,468.77 per employee annually. EI premiums are tax-deductible for employees (as a non-refundable federal tax credit) and fully deductible as a business expense for employers. Quebec residents pay lower EI premiums (0.98% in 2024) because the province operates its own parental insurance program (QPIP) that covers benefits EI provides elsewhere.
EI regular benefits replace 55% of average insurable weekly earnings, up to a maximum weekly benefit of $668 in 2024. The waiting period is one week (served once per benefit period), and the number of insurable hours required to qualify ranges from 420 to 700 hours depending on the regional unemployment rate, with higher unemployment regions requiring fewer hours. Most urban Canadians in low-unemployment regions need 700 hours (roughly 17.5 weeks of full-time work) to qualify. Benefits are taxable as income in the year received. The standard benefit period is 14 to 45 weeks, depending on hours accumulated and regional unemployment rates.
Maternity benefits (15 weeks at 55%, or up to $668/week) are available only to the birth parent, beginning up to 8 weeks before the expected due date. Parental benefits cover the period after birth or adoption: under the standard option, 40 weeks of benefits are shared between parents at 55% up to $668/week; under the extended option, 69 weeks are available at a lower replacement rate of 33% (up to $401/week). If both parents claim, one parent takes the standard 40 weeks and the other can receive up to 5 additional 'other parent' weeks, making a maximum of 40 weeks total under standard. Sickness benefits cover up to 26 weeks at 55% for workers unable to work due to illness, injury, or quarantine.
Canada's EI system is unique among peer nations for its regional unemployment rate adjustment to eligibility hours, a feature designed to account for the structural employment volatility in Atlantic Canada and resource-dependent regions that does not apply to EI in the same way across other federal programs. Quebec's parallel QPIP (Quebec Parental Insurance Plan) offers more generous parental leave than federal EI (replacing up to 70% of earnings versus 55%), and uniquely provides 5 weeks of non-transferable 'daddy weeks' regardless of the other parent's benefits taken. This dual-system complexity within a single country has no equivalent in the UK, Australia, or the US (which has no national paid parental leave program at all).