Meaning & use
unemployment insurance
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
A government program that pays money for a limited time to people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.
Grammar: No plural and no 'an': she receives unemployment insurance, not an unemployment insurance.
Patterns
- apply for unemployment insurance
- unemployment insurance payments
After the factory closed, Marcus applied for unemployment insurance the same week.
Employers pay a small tax that funds unemployment insurance.
Unemployment insurance usually lasts only a few months.
Common combinations
- claim unemployment insurance
- You can claim unemployment insurance online in most states.
- unemployment insurance benefits
- Her unemployment insurance benefits covered rent while she searched for work.
- unemployment insurance fund
- The unemployment insurance fund ran low during the recession.
- be eligible for unemployment insurance
- Workers who quit voluntarily may not be eligible for unemployment insurance.
Synonyms and how they differ
- unemployment benefit
- This is the usual British phrase and often refers to the payment itself rather than the scheme that provides it.
- the dole
- The dole is an informal British term and can sound slightly negative, unlike the neutral unemployment insurance.
- jobless benefits
- Jobless benefits is a looser, newspaper-style phrase for the same payments.
Word family
- unemployment noun
- the state of having no job
- unemployed adjective
- without a paid job
- insure verb
- to protect with insurance
- employer noun
- a person or company that hires workers
Commonly confused: unemployment insurance or unemployment benefit?
unemployment insurance vs unemployment benefit
Unemployment insurance is the scheme workers pay into, while unemployment benefit is the money they receive, especially in British English.
Practice
When Dana lost her job in a layoff, she applied for ______ to cover her bills for a few months.
Choose one answer.
Unemployment insurance pays people temporarily after a job loss; the other types protect against illness, death or trip problems.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “unemployment insurance”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.