After a layoff, in addition to your severance pay, most workers are entitled to apply for unemployment benefit, commonly known in Spain as "el paro." It's a separate right, independent of severance pay, and its processing and calculation follow their own rules.
Requirements to be entitled to the benefit
To access the contributory unemployment benefit, you need to meet, among others, these requirements:
- Be registered and in active status (or equivalent) with Social Security.
- Have contributed for unemployment for a minimum of 360 days within the 6 years before the legal unemployment situation began.
- Be in a legally recognized unemployment situation: layoff (objective, unfair dismissal, or fair dismissal for reasons not attributable to the worker), end of a temporary contract, or certain cases of justified voluntary resignation.
- Be registered as a job seeker and not have turned down suitable job offers or refused to take part in employability improvement activities.
If you resigned voluntarily without justified cause, you generally aren't entitled to the contributory benefit.
How the benefit amount is calculated
The amount is calculated from your regulatory base, which is the average of your contribution bases for occupational contingencies over the last 180 days worked. The following percentages are applied to that regulatory base:
| Period | Percentage applied |
|---|---|
| First 180 days | 70% of the regulatory base |
| From day 181 onward | 60% of the regulatory base (60% since a recent reform standardized the later stretch) |
The result is always capped by a maximum and a minimum amount, which vary depending on whether you have dependent children, and which are updated every year.
How long you can receive unemployment benefit
The duration of the benefit depends on the days you contributed for unemployment in the previous 6 years, not on a fixed term for everyone. Broadly speaking, the more days you've contributed, the more months of benefit you're entitled to, within a progressive scale that runs from a minimum (with 360 days contributed) up to a maximum of 24 months (with 2,160 days contributed or more).
What happens if you start working while receiving unemployment benefit
If you find a job before exhausting the benefit, it's suspended (in many cases it isn't lost automatically or permanently). There are different arrangements for combining work and unemployment benefit depending on the type of contract and the circumstances, so it's worth checking your specific case before assuming that accepting a new job means losing the rest of your pending benefit.
Unemployment benefit and severance pay are not the same thing
It's a common mistake to think that if your severance pay includes a dismissal indemnity, that reduces your right to unemployment benefit, or vice versa. They are two completely independent concepts: severance pay is the settlement of outstanding items with your former employer, while unemployment benefit is Social Security coverage funded by your own previous unemployment contributions. Receiving an indemnity doesn't reduce or eliminate your right to the benefit.
Check your severance pay too
If you've just been laid off, before focusing on unemployment benefit it's worth checking that the severance pay your employer offers includes all the items you're entitled to. Our severance pay calculator helps you estimate the approximate amount before signing anything.