Employment Insurance is the federal scheme that replaces part of your income when you are out of work in Canada, and that also pays maternity, parental and sickness benefits. You fund it through a premium taken from each paycheque, and your employer pays a larger premium on top.
The premium is a flat rate on insurable earnings, up to a yearly ceiling. For 2026 the Canada Employment Insurance Commission set the employee rate at $1.63 per $100 of insurable earnings, with maximum insurable earnings of $68,900, according to Employment and Social Development Canada. On a $60,000 salary that is $978. The most an employee pays in the year is $1,123.07. Employers pay 1.4 times the employee's premium, $2.28 per $100, so the employer's maximum is $1,572.30 for each worker.
In Quebec the employee rate is lower, $1.30 per $100 with a maximum of $895.70, because parental benefits there come from the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan, which has a premium of its own.
The shape differs from the Canada Pension Plan in two ways. CPP ignores the first $3,500 of your earnings each year, according to the Canada Revenue Agency, while the EI premium has no such exemption, and the two stop at different ceilings: $68,900 for EI against $74,600 for the first CPP tier. Japan has a scheme of the same English name, also charged on pay, which the calculator deducts there as well.
The take-home pay calculator shows EI as its own line, switches to the Quebec rate and adds the parental insurance premium when you choose Quebec, counts the employer's 1.4 times share in the cost to employer, and has a switch for the few employees whose work is not insurable.