EI compensation for the very highest income earners is nowhere near to minimum wage, and nowhere near enough to even get by on.

EI is a very flimsy safety net which will not support most of the people who pay into it. If you have been employed for a long time, and built up substantial savings, then EI can form a cushion to the economic shock of job loss. If you have a mortgage and kids, and your last layoff decimated your savings, then this next layoff will just bankrupt you. That's what happened to me.

This is what happens all the time to people. It's a personal anecdote, but not an uncommon one.

Six years ago I was a very successful tradesman. A journeyman plumber and pipe fitter, after 30 years of shitty menial jobs, I was finally earning a good wage at the age of 43. I began saving money. I had a house, a wife, and we saved some money. Fast forward three years and I am hospitalized with a serious infection. It will be three years before I work again. Medical EI pays me 408$ a week, but my fixed costs are 700$ a week without any luxury at all. My savings begin to drain. 9 months or so later, EI runs out, and I begin to collect the disability insurance, 450$ a week and my savings continue to drain. Two years after my hospitalization, my life savings are essentially gone. I need to return to work, but my rehab is not complete. I persuade my doctor to let me try. It's a failure, I am in constant pain, I am laid off because I cannot do my job, but at least I managed to work long enough to qualify for EI again. In the meantime, I am having problems with depression and anxiety and mental issues due to stress. My relationship is destroyed, in part because I deal so poorly with all this stress. I find another job (3 months ago), this job will be over by the end of August, I will be close to qualifying for minimum EI at that point, but may not make the cut.

So EI kept me off welfare I guess, but I no longer have a wife, a home, or any luxuries in life. I now live with my elderly mother, every extra dime goes to pay down debt incurred during unemployment, and goes into savings. I am 51, my retirement savings are gone, and the current economy shows no signs of improving enough to provide me with full employment.

So if you think current EI is something that will protect you when you get laid off this fall, think again. It will not even come close.

My situation is not unusual. Two extended periods of unemployment are common, and they are almost always going to utterly devastate the victim. The reality is that most people cannot cut expenses enough to make EI anything but a small income supplement.

Think you can cut that 175$ cable bill? Sorry, you have a contract. That smartphone? Big penalty to get out of that. Your mortgage, sell that house? An awful lot of your mortgages are underwater, just like ours was. My ex is stuck now in a condo she cannot afford, and I am fortunate she owned it before we met or I would be on the hook for that mortgage as well. Add in a life insurance policy, a car payment and insurance? You cannot live without this shit, and ei is not enough to cover it.