20 Hours a Week Enrolls You in Employment Insurance: the Basic Allowance When You Lose Your Job

A person employed in Japan who works 20 hours a week or more and is expected to remain continuously employed for 31 days or more is, as a rule, enrolled in employment insurance. The “basic allowance” (often called unemployment benefit) is what you can receive from employment insurance while looking for your next job after losing one. Since April 2025, the waiting period before a person who resigned for their own reasons begins receiving the basic allowance has, as a rule, been shortened to 1 month. From October 2028, people working 10 hours a week or more will also become eligible to enroll.

What follows is based on the wording of the Employment Insurance Act (e-Gov Law Search), the official pages of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) and Hello Work, and the “Guidebook on Living and Working” (Japanese edition, 8th ed.) supervised by the Immigration Services Agency, checked in September 2026. Whether you can receive the basic allowance, and for how many days, is decided case by case by Hello Work; this article does not make that judgment. How to look for work, and which Hello Work offices have a Ukrainian interpreter, are covered in “Looking for Work in Japan.”

Who Is Enrolled, and the Premium

The Employment Insurance Act excludes from coverage people whose contracted working hours are under 20 hours a week, and people not expected to remain continuously employed by the same company for 31 days or more, among others (Article 6). Conversely, anyone meeting both conditions — 20 hours a week or more, and expected to work 31 days or more — is enrolled regardless of the size of the company, whether they are a dispatched worker, a contract employee, a part-time worker, or an arubaito (casual worker). Daytime students are, as a rule, excluded.

According to an MHLW leaflet, even if an employment contract runs for less than 31 days, if it includes a provision that it may be renewed and does not state that it will end within 31 days, the person is treated as expected to work 31 days or more. The Tokyo Labour Bureau’s “Q&A on Employing Foreign Nationals” (2025 edition) explains that employment insurance applies to foreign nationals in the same way as to Japanese nationals regardless of nationality, but excludes foreign civil servants and people clearly covered by a foreign unemployment compensation system, and states that people who entered Japan on a working holiday and international students (daytime students) are not eligible.

Both the worker and the company pay the premium. For fiscal year 2026 (April 2026 – March 2027), in general industries the worker’s share is 5/1,000 of wages and the company’s share is 8.5/1,000 (MHLW).

The company carries out the enrollment procedure. If you think your company has not done this, you as the worker can request Hello Work to confirm whether you are enrolled (Article 8). MHLW states that if you are confirmed to have been someone who should have been enrolled, you can be enrolled retroactively.

Two Conditions for Receiving the Basic Allowance

According to Hello Work’s guidance and Article 13 of the Employment Insurance Act, both of the following must apply.

• Enrollment period: in the 2 years before the day you left, your total insured period must be 12 months or more. A month counts if it has 11 days or more on which wages were paid, or 80 hours or more of work. For a person who left due to bankruptcy or dismissal (a “specified recipient”) or due to non-renewal of a fixed-term contract and similar reasons (a “specified-reason leaver”), 6 months or more in the year before leaving is enough.
• Being in a “state of unemployment”: you have registered as a job seeker at Hello Work, and, despite having both the intention and the ability to work at any time, you are unable to find a job. Hello Work states that you cannot receive it if you cannot work right away because of illness, injury, pregnancy, childbirth, or child-rearing, if you plan to rest for a while, or if you are devoting yourself to housework.

How Much, for How Many Days, and From When

The daily amount (the basic allowance daily rate) is, as a rule, roughly 50–80% of the “wage daily rate” — the total of your regular monthly wages for the 6 months before leaving, divided by 180 (45–80% for ages 60–64). The lower your wages, the higher the percentage. There is a ceiling by age.

The number of days you can receive it (the prescribed number of benefit days) is set by the reason you left, your age, and your enrollment period, and according to the Guidebook on Living and Working, runs, as a rule, from 90 to 330 days (up to 360 days for someone whose disability or similar circumstance makes finding work difficult). The period during which you can receive it runs, as a rule, for 1 year from the day after you left; once this passes, you cannot receive it even if days remain. If illness, injury, pregnancy, childbirth, or child-rearing keeps you unable to work continuously for 30 days or more, you can, on request, extend this period by that many days (the extended period can run up to 4 years in total; Article 20).

When Payment Begins Depends on Why You Left

On the period (the “payment restriction”) during which the basic allowance is not paid to someone who resigned for personal reasons, Article 33 of the Employment Insurance Act provides for “a period of not less than 1 month and not more than 3 months, as determined by the director of the public employment security office.” To align with the 2024 legal amendment, MHLW shortened this period, as a rule, from 2 months to 1 month, effective from April 1, 2025. Under the same amendment, a person who has, within the year before leaving or after leaving, undertaken a designated form of training on their own initiative is no longer subject to the payment restriction (Article 33, paragraph 1, items 2 and 3).

Some materials still show the pre-amendment “2 months.” As of September 2026, Hello Work’s “Concrete Procedures for Employment Insurance” page and the Ukrainian-language edition of the Guidebook on Living and Working (7th ed., March 2025) are among these. Confirm your own payment-restriction period with Hello Work when your eligibility is determined.

The reason you left is recorded on the certificate of unemployment (離職票, rishokuhyo) issued by your company. The Guidebook on Living and Working recommends carefully checking the reason-for-leaving section when you receive your certificate, because recording a dismissal for the company’s reasons, or a resignation prompted by a recommendation to resign, as a resignation for personal reasons can put you at a disadvantage when receiving the basic allowance. Hello Work advises consulting them if you disagree with the stated reason for leaving.

The Procedure

1. After leaving, receive your “Certificate(s) of Unemployment Under Employment Insurance” (雇用保険被保険者離職票, -1 and -2) from your company. If it does not arrive, contact the Hello Work office that covers your address.
2. Register as a job seeker at the Hello Work office covering your address, and submit the certificate. Bring: the certificate of unemployment, a document confirming your My Number, an identification document, 2 photos (which can be skipped if you show your My Number card), and your own bankbook or cash card.
3. Hello Work determines your eligibility and also rules on the reason you left. After that, you attend a briefing session for recipients.
4. As a rule, once every 4 weeks, on a set day, you go to Hello Work to have your unemployment status certified. For the period covered by each certification, you generally need a record of 2 or more job-seeking activities.
5. Payment is normally deposited into your account within 5 business days of the day your unemployment is certified.

For identity confirmation documents, Hello Work’s business handling guidelines list the residence card as one of the acceptable documents. Procedures are accepted on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m.

Some Hello Work offices cannot handle employment insurance procedures. An MHLW leaflet warns that this includes the Employment Service Center for Foreigners with a Ukrainian interpreter introduced in the article on looking for work.

Failing to report work or income on your unemployment certification statement, or falsifying your job-seeking activities, is treated as fraudulent receipt and payment is stopped. Hello Work states that you may be ordered to repay the amount fraudulently received, plus a penalty of up to twice that amount.

Status of Residence, and People Planning to Leave Japan

Enrollment in employment insurance does not depend on nationality. The basic allowance, however, is a system in which you register as a job seeker at the Hello Work office covering your address in Japan and receive it while having your unemployment certified once every 4 weeks (Article 15). Hello Work’s business handling guidelines list “accompanying a spouse posted overseas for work” as a reason that can extend the period you can receive it, but state that an overseas trip does not qualify.

A person planning to leave Japan, whose period of stay is close to expiring, or whose status of residence limits the kind of work they may do, should confirm with Hello Work, before resigning or before starting the procedure, whether they can receive it. The work rules for people who evacuated from Ukraine and changed to the status of residence “Designated Activities (1 year)” are covered in the article on looking for work in Japan.

From October 2028, People Working 10 Hours a Week or More Will Also Be Enrolled

Under the Act Partially Amending the Employment Insurance Act and Others (Act No. 26 of Reiwa 6 [2024], enacted May 10, 2024), the enrollment condition for weekly contracted working hours changes from “20 hours or more” to “10 hours or more” on October 1, 2028. According to MHLW’s explanatory materials, in line with this, the standard for counting a month of insured period will change from “11 days or more, or 80 hours or more” to “6 days or more, or 40 hours or more,” and the daily working time below which a working day can still be treated as an unemployment day for certification purposes will change from “under 4 hours” to “under 2 hours.”

The same amendment also created, from October 2025, an “Educational Training Leave Benefit,” paying the same amount as the basic allowance to a person who takes unpaid leave for education and training while still employed (subject to conditions such as 5 years or more of insured period).

Materials Available in Ukrainian

The Ukrainian-language edition of the Guidebook on Living and Working, supervised by the Immigration Services Agency, has a section on employment insurance and the basic allowance. However, in the 7th edition (March 2025), the payment restriction is still given as the pre-amendment “2 months,” as noted above. The latest Japanese edition is the 8th. Whether an interpreter is available at Hello Work should be confirmed by phone before you go. For consultation services overall, see “Where to Ask First When You Start Living in Japan.”