In January, earnings-related allowance was paid out to 33,095 Open Unemployment Fund members. The number increased 45.6% from January 2023 when earnings-related allowance was paid out 22,727 members. 13.6% of A-kassa members received earnings-related allowance in January, an increase of 2.5 percentage points from December 2023.
Out of all recipients of earnings-related allowance, 44.2% received lay-off period daily allowance and 13.1% adjusted daily allowance. Out of all daily allowance recipients, the share of lay-off period daily allowance recipients has continued to rise since last October.
Heavy increase in number of recipients from construction and industry
– The current situation of construction and industry workers is evident in the unemployment fund. A major share of A-kassa members come from these sectors. Their situation is immediately reflected in the number of applications and recipients, says A-kassa’s Benefit Manager Kaisa Tikka.
The number of earnings-related allowance recipients in construction increased 54.8% from previous January. The share of earnings-related allowance recipients from the construction industry climbed to 22.0% in January, an increase of 7.7 percentage points from January the previous year.
In addition to the construction sector, the number of earnings-related allowance recipients in various industrial fields increased by 53.1% from January 2023. The share of recipients of earnings-related allowance working in the industry sector likewise increased in relation to all members, landing at 13.5% and topping the figure from previous January by 4.8 percentage points.
– In creative industries, the recipients of earnings-related allowance has also increased, by 29% from January 2023, says Kaisa Tikka.
In transport industries, the recipients of earnings-related allowance increased by 15% from January of 2023. Total growth in these industries is curbed by the fact that the number of recipients of earnings-related allowance in postal and logistics industries decreased from January of the previous year.
Number of payout days down
The average number of payout days was 19.7 in January, down 1.7 days from January last year. According to Kaisa Tikka, the decrease in payout days is partly due to the increase in layoffs compared to the previous year. Layoffs are mostly short and non-continuous, which decreases the number of payout days compared to longer unemployment periods.
Starting in January, the waiting period was bumped up from five days to seven, which likely has decreased the number of payout days slightly. However, the downward trend began already last year before the change in legislation came into force.
Increase in paid-out earnings-related allowances
A total of 51.1 million euros in earnings-related allowances were paid out by the end of January, up to 41.9% more than during the same period in the previous year.
In January, A-kassa received a total of 50,574 earnings-related allowance applications, of which 16% were first-time applications. First-time applications had an average processing time of 13.3 days while follow-up applications had an average processing time of 7.2 days.
Positive feedback for A-kassa’s customer service
Our customer service received a total of 13,942 phone calls in January. Their average response time was 3:57 minutes. Based on our phone service customer feedback survey, 66% of respondents were highly satisfied and 23% quite satisfied with A-kassa’s service. Our chat service in the electronic eService remained highly popular, with a total of 1,365 chats in January. Average queuing time at the chat service was 2:26 minutes. One discussion lasted 10:06 minutes on average. For chats, 76% of all service ratings were positive.
Monthly statistical summaries are available at the A-kassa website
