Unemployment benefit in Spain: how much you get and for how long

What the benefit depends on: two numbers and a table

Spain's contributory unemployment benefit depends on two numbers (your regulatory base and the applicable percentage) and one table, duration by contributions. Nothing else, and none of it is the salary you saw on your payslip.

The regulatory base: your last 180 contributed days

The regulatory base is the average of your unemployment contribution bases over the last 180 worked days: add those bases, divide by 180 for a daily average, times 30 for the monthly one.

Two details work in your favour: the contribution base already includes prorated extra payments, and it is a gross base, usually higher than the net you were paid. You can check your exact bases in your social security contribution report.

The amount: 70% first, 60% after, and the caps

On that base:

• 70% during the first 180 days of benefit;
• 60% from day 181 onwards.

The result is then fitted between a minimum and a maximum linked to the IPREM and your dependent children: the maximum runs from 175% with no children to 225% with two or more, and the minimum from 80% to 107%. With one detail almost nobody carries, which raises every figure by 16.67%: article 270.3 LGSS takes the monthly IPREM “increased by one sixth”, that is €700 rather than €600. That is where the €1,225, €1,400 and €1,575 maximums and the €560 and €749 minimums published by SEPE come from, and those figures have not changed since 2023 because the IPREM has not changed either. Its official simulator remains the most reliable source for your own case.

On middle and higher salaries the maximum cap often bites: that is why two people with very different salaries can receive the same benefit.

Duration: 4 to 24 months

Article 269 LGSS converts contributed days (within the last 6 years) into benefit days:

Below 360 contributed days there is no contributory benefit, but a subsidy may apply, a different scheme with its own rules and amounts.

A leave of absence gives no right to benefit

Article 267 of the Spanish Social Security Act lists the legal situations of unemployment, and a leave of absence is none of them: the contract has neither ended nor been suspended for one of the causes on that list, it is alive and merely suspended, so there is nothing to claim while it lasts. Nor do the months that do contribute during a care leave add days of benefit, because article 237.1 counts them towards the retirement pension, permanent incapacity, death and survivors, and maternity and paternity, and not towards unemployment. The Spanish leave-of-absence calculator separates the two, and what voluntary leave keeps and loses explains why that type in particular returns nothing on your return.

The contrast with the other pause of a contract that IS on that list is worth seeing. A permanent seasonal worker's inactivity is a legal unemployment situation in its own right: letter d) of article 267.1 is reserved for it expressly, so between seasons the benefit is claimed. What changes there is the duration, because contributions only accrue while working, and permanent seasonal work in Spain explains the ceiling that puts on the benefit.

The three practical steps

1. Get the company certificate and check your finiquito: the finiquito calculator shows what it must contain. If the termination was a dismissal, check the severance too.
2. Claim at SEPE within 15 working days of the termination. Late claims lose benefit days.
3. Simulate your exact amount in SEPE's tool: it applies this year's IPREM and caps to your real bases: it is the official tool and needs no estimates.

This information is educational and is not advice. Exact amounts depend on the current IPREM and your family situation: always confirm them with SEPE.