Employment Insurance (EI): Total Insurable Earnings vs Weeks of Entitlement

Question

If one's Regular Weeks Entitlement for the EI is 50 weeks, but the Total Insurable Earnings amount is about $15,000 then does this mean that the EI payments would stop once the $15,000 has been paid in EI payments, which would certainly happen well before the 50 weeks is over (since the weekly EI payment is in excess of $500)?
The EI website says

You will stop receiving benefits once one of the following 2 conditions has occurred:

All the weeks of benefits to which you were entitled to have been paid. This occurs when the number of weeks displayed in the "Weeks of Regular Benefits Paid" row is equal to the number of weeks displayed in the "Total Weeks of Regular Entitlement".
OR
The "End Date of Claim" has been reached.

But nothing is said about the Total Insurable Earnings amount. I'm lost.

Kate Gregory · Accepted Answer

I don't know why you feel lost. Total Insurable Earnings isn't used to determine how long your payments last. It's not "total amount of insurance we will pay you." It is "total amount of money you earned over the period we used to calculate things." It's normally used to determine the amount of each payment:

We calculate your total insurable earnings

We determine the divisor (number of best weeks) that corresponds to your regional rate of unemployment

We divide your total insurable earnings for your best weeks by your required number of best weeks

We then multiply the result by 55% to obtain the amount of your weekly benefits.

You then get this amount for however long you're entitled to. Right now during Covid, the weekly payment has been raised to at least $500. So your total insurable earnings divided by the 14 to 22 weeks (depending on where you live) times 55% would be what you normally get a week, but you're getting more than that. This is till Sept 21 so far, but might get extended if we're still not back to normal by then.

Employment Insurance (EI): Total Insurable Earnings vs Weeks of Entitlement

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