Unemployment funds 2020: earnings-related daily allowance expenditure and number of daily allowance beneficiaries increased considerably, and application processing times lengthened

The economic impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis pervaded the operation of unemployment funds as of the spring 2020. Among other things, the crisis affected the growth of claims expenditures, application processing times and the number of members.

Unemployment funds’ expenditures for earnings-related daily allowances increased by 58% on the previous year. A total of EUR 2.7 billion in earnings-related daily allowances was paid. The number of earnings-related daily allowance beneficiaries grew by 83% and the number of allowance days paid increased by 46%. Earnings-related daily allowance expenditures increased in 24 funds and decreased in one. There was considerable variation in the growth of allowance expenditures across the funds. The allowance expenditures of the entrepreneur fund were almost a quarter higher than in 2019.

The processing times for earnings-related daily allowance applications increased during the year as the number of applications soared due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the worst stage, the waiting time before processing an application in individual funds was around 80 days. The processing times of approved applications for full daily unemployment allowance were 16 days on average during the peak stage. The average processing time across all funds in 2020 was 12 days.

The total number of members in the wage-earner funds grew by almost 58,000 and the number of members in the entrepreneur fund grew by a good 400 members.

The data presented above are based on the FIN-FSA’s Finnish-language annual online release on unemployment funds – Työttömyyskassat 2020. Due to the rapid change of circumstances in 2020, the FIN-FSA increased the frequency of publication of information on unemployment funds’ application numbers and expenditures so that they are now updated on a monthly basis.

For further information, please contact:

Dima Matjushin, Information Specialist, tel. +358 183 5588.

Appendix

Työttömyyskassat 2020 (in Finnish, pdf and Excel tables)