An Alternative to Employment Insurance

A N. A L T E R N A T I V E. T O. E M P L O Y M E N T. I N S U R A N C E ATLANTIC INSTITUTE FOR MARKET STUDIES Policy Paper An Alternative to Employment Insurance Perspective for Atlantic Canada By Justin Hatherly Halifax, Nova Scotia, September 2017 © 2 0 1 7. A T L A N T I C. I N S T I T U T E. F O R. M A R K E T. S T U D I E S 1 A N. A L T E R N A T I V E. T O. E M P L O Y M E N T. I N S U R A N [...] Where once such workers may have found off-season employment or saved frugally to provide for non-working months, by the middle of the 1960s they could rely on EI as a guaranteed income support.9 © 2 0 1 7. A T L A N T I C. I N S T I T U T E. F O R. M A R K E T. S T U D I E S 9 A N. A L T E R N A T I V E. T O. E M P L O Y M E N T. I N S U R A N C E Despite the program’s gradual expansion, benefits [...] It plays a role in elevated © 2 0 1 7. A T L A N T I C. I N S T I T U T E. F O R. M A R K E T. S T U D I E S 12 A N. A L T E R N A T I V E. T O. E M P L O Y M E N T. I N S U R A N C E unemployment levels in parts of the country (particularly Atlantic Canada), possibly contributes to a poor productivity growth performance, and leads to significant interregional redistributions of wealth. [...] A greater proportion of the population in Atlantic Canada relies on the program, the amount of expenditure on EI benefits in the region far outstrips cumulative EI payroll taxes, the percentage of frequent claimants in each of the Atlantic Provinces exceeds the national average, and all four provinces receive a greater percentage of expenditure than the percentage of the eligible labour force they [...] Analyzing Chilean EI recipients’ transitions to work, the authors find that the greater the sum in an EI savings account prior to an unemployment spell (and thus the lower the potential that a beneficiary will have to rely upon the Solidarity Fund), the higher the probability of finding employment and rapidly ending the use of their funds.107 Observing the recipients’ behaviour, the authors conten