Calculators: termination pay and Employment Insurance

This site has two tools: a severance pay calculator that works out the termination pay, vacation pay and any statutory severance your employer owes you when your job ends, and an Employment Insurance (EI) calculator that works out your weekly benefit, 55% of your best-weeks earnings, and how many weeks you'd get. Each has two doors: a page of its own, with the tool at the top and just enough text to use it, and the guide that explains what it's calculating, with the tool inside it, because a number is only worth having when the rule behind it is right beside it. It's the same tool behind both doors; pick the one you need.

Updated October 19, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources · what's new

Both work the same way under the hood. They run in your browser, using the same verified figures as the text around them, they show every step of the math, and they don't send or store anything you type. Your numbers go into a link only if you ask for a link to your result: the link you copy, after the # sign, a part your browser never sends to us. If someone you work with was let go too, either calculator can be sent to them with the Share button on its page.

What your employer owes you when your job ends

It answers one question: what's the legal minimum you're owed, and by when. It takes your first and last day of work, your regular pay and how it's paid, how the job ended, and how much written working notice you actually got. In Ontario it also asks the payroll and group question that decides statutory severance, and for a group termination it asks how many people were let go in the same period.

It gives back:

• The notice of termination your length of service earns under that statute, and the pay in lieu of any of it you didn't work.
• Statutory severance pay where the statute has one, with the qualifying test spelled out. Where the statute has none, it says so and shows zero rather than leaving a gap.
• The vacation pay still owing on your final pay.
• The total statutory minimum, and the date your final pay is due.
• What doesn't change that minimum: quitting removes notice but not the vacation pay you've earned, and a just cause allegation only removes notice if it meets the standard in the statute, which is a higher bar than an employer being unhappy with you.

It's on the severance pay calculator page with a jurisdiction selector and the text kept short, on the severance pay guide with the same selector and the full explanation, and on each of the fourteen jurisdiction pages preset to that statute, so the schedules, the exclusions and the sections you're reading are the ones the tool is using.

Your EI benefit and how many weeks

It answers: do I have the hours, how much a week, and for how long. It takes the EI region where you live, your insurable hours in the last 52 weeks and your average weekly insurable earnings in your best weeks, with a helper that divides your total earnings by the number of best weeks. You can also enter severance, pay in lieu or vacation pay you were paid when the job ended.

It gives back whether your hours meet the requirement for your region, your weekly benefit at 55% of your average weekly insurable earnings and capped at $729.00 per week, the number of weeks the schedule gives you for your hours and your region's rate, and roughly when your benefits would start. In ordinary times a waiting period comes first and severance and vacation pay paid out when you leave are allocated to the weeks after your job ends, which pushes the start of your claim back; while the temporary measures are in force, until October 9, 2027, neither applies, and the estimator says which rule it used.

It's on the EI calculator page with every region available and the text kept short, on the EI guide with the same regions and the full explanation, and on each province and territory page with that jurisdiction's regions loaded. The regional table it uses, with the four-week period it covers, is on the regions page.

What neither of them does

Neither tool decides anything. The severance pay calculator gives you the floor the statute sets, not what a court might award as reasonable notice at common law, not what your employment contract or collective agreement promises, and not an opinion on whether your dismissal was lawful or your employer's just cause allegation would hold up. The EI estimator follows the Employment Insurance Act and its Regulations; Service Canada decides your claim, using the record of employment your employer issues and information neither you nor a calculator can predict.

Neither is legal advice. For your own case: an employment lawyer, the employment standards office of your province or territory, or Service Canada for an EI question. And they aren't a substitute for reading the page around them: the figures, their sections and their review dates are printed right there.

Where the figures come from

Every figure in both tools comes out of the same data file as the text of the site, with its section, its validity, its verification status and the day it was last checked. A figure that hasn't been verified against the statute can't reach a published page at all. How that works is in the methodology, every figure is listed in official figures, and the file itself is published under a Creative Commons licence at /data/legal-data-2026.json.

If a tool gives you a result that doesn't match what you've been paid or told, that's worth an email. Send the page, your inputs and what you expected to hello@owedatwork.com, and leave your personal documents out of it: contact sets out what to send and what never to send.