EI on a $$40,000 salary (2026): $423 a week, for how many weeks?

Which weeks count: the divisor that decides your benefit

$40,000 a year is $769 a week on average — but EI does not use the average. It adds up your highest-paid weeks over the last 52 and divides by a number set by your region's unemployment rate: 14 weeks where unemployment is highest, 22 where it is lowest. On a steady salary the two give the same answer, $423. On variable earnings they do not. A worker on $40,000 made up of overtime-heavy and quiet weeks is better served by a 14-week divisor, and a worker who has had fewer than the required number of paid weeks has the missing ones counted as zero — the single most common reason a benefit comes out lower than expected.

Weeks and total EI on $40,000 in every economic region

1,820 insurable hours and steady earnings, so the best-weeks divisor does not bite. Weekly benefit: $423.

The regional rate in the third column does two separate things at once: it sets the number of weeks in the fourth, and it sets the best-weeks divisor that produced the weekly benefit. A high-unemployment region is therefore doubly favourable — more weeks, and a divisor that ignores your worst weeks. On steady earnings only the first effect shows up in this table.