Summary

The report presents an overview of unemployment insurance (UI) and employment insurance (EI) schemes in place in 14 countries, as a means of providing partial income replacement to insured workers while they are between jobs, and looking for new employment. The countries chosen for the comparative review cover not only a wide geographic range, but also a range of economic development stages: Argentina, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Thailand, United States and Viet Nam.

The purpose of the report is to highlight the main features and practices applied in these UI schemes. The report is organized as follows:

Chapter 1 - Introduction to the review of unemployment or employment insurance experiences
Chapter 2 - Comparison of UI/EI schemes’ setting-up
Chapter 3 - A diversity of UI/EI parameters and modalities
Chapter 4 - Governance, financing, and sustainability of UI/EI schemes
Chapter 5 - Comparative performance among the UI/EI schemes

Conclusions of the report are presented in Chapter 6, followed by Country summaries of unemployment and employment insurance schemes.