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Executive Highlights

The 2009 Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report provides an examination of the Employment Insurance (EI) program for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2009.

Lowest employment growth in 15 years, due to the global recession in 2008/09

  • Annual average employment grew by 117,900 in 2008/09 (+0.7%).
  • This was the lowest employment growth in level terms since 1993/94 (+94,800) and slowest growth in percentage terms since 1992/93 (-0.8%).
  • The annual average unemployment rate for 2008/09 was 6.6%.

Access to benefits was high among those who contributed to the program

  • Among those who had been paying EI premiums and were then laid off, 82.2% were eligible for EI benefits in 2008.
  • Of those working in December 2007, 87.0% would have had sufficient hours to qualify for EI regular benefits and 90.9% would have had sufficient hours to qualify for EI special benefits.

Regular EI claims increased in 2008/09, in the midst of the first recession since 1991/92

  • The number of new regular claims increased by 26.9% in 2008/09, to 1.6 million.
  • Regular benefits paid also increased (+19.4%) to $9.9 billion, while average weekly benefits increased by $17 to reach $364.
  • In 2007/081, the average regular claim lasted 18.7 weeks and represented 60.6% of the average number of weeks to which claimants were entitled.
  • As was the case in the previous year, in 2007/08, 28.4% of regular claimants used all the weeks to which they were entitled.

Total regular and special benefits paid increased for both men and women

  • In 2008/09, total regular benefits paid increased by 21.8% for men and 14.5% for women.
  • Total special benefits paid increased by 8.6% for men and 6.3% for women.

Maternity and parental claims increased

  • Maternity (+2.5%) and parental (+2.9%) claims increased in all provinces in 2008/09, other than Quebec, which has its own parental insurance plan.
  • On average, parents used 91.0% of the year of parental leave to which they were entitled.

Fishing claims continued to decrease

  • While more concentrated in British Columbia (-12.8%), there was a decrease in fishing claims in all other major fish-producing provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador.

There was a significant increase in the number of Work Sharing agreements

  • In 2008/09, 69,380 claims were established, an increase of 416% from 2007/08.
  • Of the 2,305 agreements signed, 44.9% related to the manufacturing industry.

Active employment measures helped Canadians prepare for, obtain and maintain employment

  • A total of 693,221 clients participated in Employment Benefits and Support Measures, taking part in a total of 1,088,877 interventions.

1 Data and analysis on duration of payments are for claims established in 2007/08 to ensure that all claims were completed. Note that many of these claims were completed in 2008/09.

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Date Modified:
2011-09-12