Unemployment Benefit
Arbeitslosengeld (ALG 1) Calculator 2026
Estimate whether you meet the qualifying insurance period (Anwartschaftszeit), how long you could receive ALG 1, and how much it would be each month
How is Arbeitslosengeld calculated?
Eligibility (Anwartschaftszeit): You generally need at least 12 months in a qualifying insurance relationship (Versicherungspflichtverhältnis) within the 30-month framework period (Rahmenfrist). Under certain conditions, a shortened 6-month qualifying period applies to predominantly short fixed-term employment (§ 142 Abs. 2 SGB III).
Amount: Your Bemessungsentgelt (average daily gross earnings) is reduced by three statutory deductions: a 20% social-insurance lump sum, calculated wage tax, and the solidarity surcharge. The wage-tax calculation follows the applicable official BMF Programmablaufplan. The resulting Leistungsentgelt is then multiplied by 60%, or 67% if the statutory child requirement is met.
Entitlement duration: The duration depends primarily on your qualifying insured periods and, for longer entitlements, your age. Under the normal rules, ALG 1 can range from 6 months up to a maximum of 24 months. A separate shorter duration applies when the shortened 6-month Anwartschaftszeit under § 142 Abs. 2 is used.
Your situation
Your Bemessungsentgelt: the average gross wage from the last 12 months worked, assumed stable. Recent raises or hour changes within that period aren't modeled separately.
How many months you were in compulsorily insured employment within the 30-month Rahmenfrist.
Two conditions, both required by § 142 Abs. 2 SGB III: employment that was predominantly short fixed-term contracts (≤ 14 weeks each), and earnings in the previous 12 months below 1.5 × the Bezugsgröße, which is 71,190 € for 2026.
The tax class registered on your tax card as of January 1 of the year your claim arises, not necessarily your current one (§ 153 Abs. 2 SGB III).
The count from your tax card (Lohnsteuerabzugsmerkmale), usually 0.5 per child, or the full amount as a single parent claiming it entirely.
Raises your Leistungssatz from 60% to 67% (§ 149 SGB III).
If you received Arbeitslosengeld within the last 2 years, your Bemessungsentgelt can't be assessed lower than it was then (§ 151 Abs. 4 SGB III).
Table of Contents
How your Arbeitslosengeld is calculated in 2026
Arbeitslosengeld I is insurance, not welfare, and the amount follows a fixed statutory route rather than a percentage of what used to land in your bank account. That single misunderstanding causes most of the surprise: ALG 1 is not 60 percent of your old net salary. The Agentur für Arbeit starts from your insured gross earnings, reduces them by three standardised deductions to reach a notional net figure of its own, and only then applies 60 or 67 percent. Each step below is one stage of that route.
From your previous salary to the Bemessungsentgelt
The starting point is the Bemessungsentgelt: your insured gross pay over the assessment period, expressed as a daily figure. § 151 Abs. 1 SGB III divides the total insured pay in the Bemessungszeitraum by the calendar days that period actually covered, which for an uninterrupted year of monthly payroll periods is 365. A 48,000 € annual gross therefore becomes 131.51 € a day. Only pay that carried unemployment-insurance contributions counts, and only up to the contribution ceiling, which is 101,400 € a year in 2026. The result is rounded to whole cents under § 338 SGB III.
The 20 percent social-insurance deduction
From that daily gross, § 153 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 SGB III removes a flat 20 percent for social insurance. This is a fixed statutory figure, not your real contribution rate: it is applied whether your actual pension, health, care and unemployment contributions came to more or less than a fifth of your pay. On 131.51 € a day that is 26.30 € gone before any tax is considered.
Notional wage tax and solidarity surcharge
Next come wage tax and solidarity surcharge, calculated on a notional basis rather than from your old payslip. The law runs the ordinary wage-tax procedure with three inputs deliberately replaced: health insurance uses the reduced rate under § 243 SGB V plus the fixed year-average supplementary rate rather than your own fund's, care insurance uses the base rate with no childless surcharge and no multi-child discount, and church tax is not computed at all. The relief for single parents is also left out, which is why tax class II produces exactly the same ALG as class I. On our 48,000 € example the notional wage tax is 17.48 € a day and the solidarity surcharge is nothing, since the surcharge threshold is far above this income.
From the Leistungsentgelt to 60 or 67 percent
What survives those three deductions is the Leistungsentgelt, the notional daily net the benefit is actually a percentage of. Multiply it by 60 percent, or 67 percent where the statutory child condition is met, and you have your daily ALG. Multiply by 30 for the monthly figure, because § 339 SGB III fixes a month at exactly 30 days. That is deliberately not a twelfth of a year: the daily figure comes from 365 covered calendar days while the month counts 30, so the monthly benefit is not your annual entitlement divided by twelve. Because the deductions are standardised, two people on identical gross salaries get identical Leistungsentgelt even if their real take-home pay differed by hundreds of euros a month.
| Step | Per day |
|---|---|
| Bemessungsentgelt (48,000 € a year ÷ 365) | 131.51 € |
| Less the 20 percent social-insurance deduction | − 26.30 € |
| Less notional wage tax (tax class I) | − 17.48 € |
| Less notional solidarity surcharge | − 0.00 € |
| Leistungsentgelt | 87.72 € |
| × 60 percent = daily Arbeitslosengeld | 52.63 € |
| × 30 days = monthly Arbeitslosengeld | 1,578.90 € |
Source: § 153 SGB III, Leistungsentgelt
Who qualifies for Arbeitslosengeld?
Three conditions have to hold at once. You must be without employment, which for these purposes means working fewer than 15 hours a week, available for placement and actively looking for work. You must have registered as unemployed in person or online, which cannot be backdated. And you must have completed the Anwartschaftszeit: generally at least 12 months in an insured employment relationship within the 30-month Rahmenfrist ending the day before your claim arises.
A reduced 6-month qualifying period exists under § 142 Abs. 2 SGB III for people whose insured work consisted predominantly of contracts of no more than 14 weeks each and whose earnings stayed below one and a half times the Bezugsgröße. It is narrow, and it carries its own much shorter entitlement table. Periods of Krankengeld, Elterngeld or military service can count towards the Anwartschaftszeit; periods of self-employment and Minijobs generally cannot, because no unemployment-insurance contributions were paid on them.
Which earnings count towards your Arbeitslosengeld?
The Bemessungsentgelt is not simply your last monthly salary. It is an average over a defined window, and which window applies decides how much a recent pay rise, a period of sick leave or a few unpaid months actually matters.
The one-year Bemessungsrahmen
By default the law looks back over one year, ending on the last day of your last insured employment before the claim arises. Within that year, the Bemessungszeitraum is made up of the days you actually had an entitlement to wages. A pay rise six months before redundancy therefore lifts the average only for the months it covered, not for the whole calculation.
What happens if you have fewer than 150 days
If that one-year window contains fewer than 150 days with an entitlement to wages, § 150 Abs. 3 SGB III widens the Bemessungsrahmen to two years. This is what catches people returning from long illness, extended parental leave or a spell of self-employment: an older, often lower salary is pulled into the average. For claims qualifying through the shortened § 142 Abs. 2 Anwartschaftszeit, which this calculator supports, the corresponding threshold is 90 days rather than 150. The window also widens in cases of hardship, but that is not automatic: you have to apply for it and supply the evidence, and the Agentur's working benchmark is a two-year average roughly 10 percent higher than the one-year figure would give.
Bonuses and irregular payments
One-off payments such as Weihnachtsgeld or Urlaubsgeld count towards the Bemessungsentgelt if unemployment-insurance contributions were paid on them, which is the usual case up to the contribution ceiling. That is a real reason a claim arising early in the year can differ from one arising late. Payments that were not insured wages do not count: Krankengeld is a benefit rather than wages, and a severance payment is compensation for losing the job rather than pay for work done, so neither lifts the Bemessungsentgelt.
Fiktive Bemessung, when no real salary can be used
Where even the two-year window cannot produce 150 qualifying days, § 152 SGB III substitutes a fictional daily wage based on the qualification level of the work you are being placed into, as a fraction of the Bezugsgröße, which is 47,460 € for 2026. A role requiring a university degree gives one three-hundredth, so 158.20 € a day; a Meister or Fachschule qualification one three-hundred-and-sixtieth, so 131.83 €; completed vocational training one four-hundred-and-fiftieth, so 105.47 €; and work needing no training one six-hundredth, so 79.10 €. This calculator does not model wage history, so it cannot detect that you fall into this path. It is one of the most common reasons a real Bescheid differs from an estimate.
How your Steuerklasse affects Arbeitslosengeld
Because the notional tax step runs the real wage-tax procedure, your Steuerklasse moves your ALG even though the benefit itself is tax-free. On the 48,000 € example the spread between the best and worst class is nearly 470 € a month. What matters is the class recorded as your Lohnsteuerabzugsmerkmal at the start of the year the claim arises, not the class you happen to be in when you sign on.
| Tax class at the start of the claim year | Monthly ALG at 48,000 € gross, 60 percent rate |
|---|---|
| I | 1,578.90 € |
| II | 1,578.90 € |
| III | 1,770.90 € |
| IV | 1,578.90 € |
| V | 1,328.70 € |
| VI | 1,302.30 € |
Switching class late in the year to raise a benefit does not generally work. § 153 Abs. 3 SGB III recognises a change between spouses or partners only where the new combination matches the ratio of their monthly earnings, or where it lowers the benefit. A change that would raise it is disregarded. Planning further ahead is a different matter: if you expect a claim next year, the class on file on 1 January of that year is the one that counts, and that is a decision worth taking before the year turns rather than after. One nuance this calculator does not model: § 153 Abs. 2 also lets a qualifying later change count from the day its conditions were first met, so the 1 January snapshot is the starting point rather than always the final word. To see how a class combination affects a couple's take-home pay while still working, use the household calculator.
60 or 67 percent: the child rate
The general Leistungssatz is 60 percent of the Leistungsentgelt. It rises to 67 percent where at least one child qualifies under § 32 EStG. The condition is narrower than people assume and it is not simply “67 percent if a child lives with me”: the child must qualify in the tax sense, and it can also be met through a spouse's or partner's qualifying child where the couple are jointly assessed, a case this calculator does not model. On the 48,000 € example the higher rate is worth 184.20 € a month, so it is worth checking against your Bescheid rather than assuming.
Maximum Arbeitslosengeld in 2026
ALG 1 has no separate cap of its own. It is limited indirectly, because only earnings up to the unemployment-insurance contribution ceiling of 101,400 € a year, or 8,450 € a month, were ever insured. Gross pay above that line produced no contributions and so produces no additional benefit. Somebody on 150,000 € receives exactly what somebody on 101,400 € receives.
| Tax class | Maximum at 60 percent | Maximum at 67 percent |
|---|---|---|
| I, II or IV | 2,797.80 € a month | 3,124.20 € a month |
| III | 3,233.40 € a month | 3,610.50 € a month |
| V | 2,416.50 € a month | 2,698.50 € a month |
| VI | 2,387.10 € a month | 2,665.80 € a month |
This is also why high earners see the largest drop relative to their old pay. Someone whose salary sat at the ceiling replaces a much smaller share of it than someone on 30,000 €, whose entire salary was insured.
How long can you receive Arbeitslosengeld?
Entitlement duration comes from a table in § 147 SGB III and depends on your insured months and, for the three longest rows, your age. Roughly, you earn one month of benefit for every two insured months, until the age-gated rows open up.
| Insured months in the Rahmenfrist | Minimum age | Entitlement |
|---|---|---|
| 12 | any | 6 months (180 days) |
| 16 | any | 8 months (240 days) |
| 20 | any | 10 months (300 days) |
| 24 | any | 12 months (360 days) |
| 30 | 50 | 15 months (450 days) |
| 36 | 55 | 18 months (540 days) |
| 48 | 58 | 24 months (720 days) |
Source: § 147 SGB III, Anspruchsdauer
Days you do not claim are not lost. An entitlement stays available for four years from the day it first arose, so taking a job and becoming unemployed again inside that window normally resumes the remaining days rather than starting from nothing. A Sperrzeit, by contrast, does shorten the entitlement itself in the case of a twelve-week block.
Sperrzeit and Ruhenszeit: when payment is blocked or delayed
A Sperrzeit is a block imposed because of something you did, and the standard case is ending the job yourself. Resigning, or signing an Aufhebungsvertrag, attracts a twelve-week Sperrzeit under § 159 SGB III, which can be reduced to six or three weeks in defined circumstances. Refusing a suitable job offer or a placement measure, or breaking off a measure, carries its own graduated blocks. Missing a required appointment, or registering as a jobseeker late, is a one-week Sperrzeit. In every case a wichtiger Grund can prevent the block, but the statute puts the burden of setting out and proving the facts on you, so an Aufhebungsvertrag is worth taking advice on before signing rather than after.
A Ruhenszeit is different: the claim rests for reasons that are not about fault. The common one is a severance payment where the job ended without observing the employer's ordinary notice period, under § 158 SGB III. Note the condition carefully, because it is widely misreported: a severance paid on a properly notified termination does not make the claim rest at all. Where it does apply, the rest runs at most until the date proper notice would have expired, is limited by reference to a portion of the severance that falls with length of service and age, and can never exceed one year.
Working while receiving Arbeitslosengeld
The 15-hour rule
You may work while claiming, but only fewer than 15 hours a week. At 15 hours or more you are no longer “beschäftigungslos” under § 138 SGB III and the entitlement stops rather than being reduced. Hours from several jobs are added together, and the limit counts hours, not earnings, so a well-paid 16-hour role ends the claim just as a poorly paid one does.
The 165 € Nebenverdienst allowance
Earnings from that work are left alone up to 165 € a month under § 155 SGB III. The allowance applies to what is left after tax, social-insurance contributions and work-related expenses, and anything above it is deducted from your ALG for the month it was earned in. Side income has to be reported whether or not you think it stays under the line. A Minijob is the usual shape this takes, and the Minijob calculator shows what one pays net.
Do savings or your partner's income reduce ALG 1?
No. This is the clearest difference between ALG 1 and Grundsicherungsgeld, the means-tested benefit that replaced Bürgergeld on 1 July 2026, and the misconception worth correcting first. ALG 1 is an insurance benefit earned through contributions, so it is not means-tested: your savings, your flat, your investments and your partner's salary are all irrelevant to whether you receive it and how much you get. Rental income and interest are likewise not offset, because the deduction rule in § 155 SGB III bites on earnings from work, not on capital or property income. Grundsicherungsgeld, which typically follows once ALG 1 runs out, works the opposite way and is assessed against household income and assets.
Arbeitslosengeld and tax: the Progressionsvorbehalt
ALG 1 is tax-free, and nothing is withheld from it. It is not, however, invisible to the tax office. Under § 32b EStG it falls under the Progressionsvorbehalt: the benefit is added to your income purely to work out the rate that then applies to your other taxable income for the year. The benefit itself is still not taxed, but the rest of your income can be taxed at a higher rate than it would have been, which is why a year with several months of ALG in it often produces a bill rather than a refund. Receiving more than 410 € of benefits subject to the Progressionsvorbehalt makes filing a return mandatory, and the Agentur für Arbeit reports what it paid you to the tax office directly, so leaving it off is not an option. The Leistungsnachweis you receive shows the figure to declare.
Health, pension and care insurance while unemployed
Drawing ALG 1 keeps you inside the social-insurance system rather than dropping you out of it. You remain a compulsory member of statutory health and long-term care insurance, and the Agentur für Arbeit pays those contributions, so no premium is taken out of your benefit. Pension insurance continues too: § 166 SGB VI sets the basis at 80 percent of the Bemessungsentgelt the benefit itself was worked out from, and § 170 SGB VI makes the Agentur, as the paying body, bear the contributions the benefit itself was worked out from. Your pension therefore keeps growing while you claim, more slowly than while you were working but not at a standstill. Two cases need their own attention. If you were privately insured before becoming unemployed, special rules decide whether you join the statutory system or stay private; where an exemption applies and you remain privately insured, the Agentur can cover contributions up to the statutory limit. And a Sperrzeit does not leave you uninsured: cover generally runs from the start of the blocked period, no earlier than the start of unemployment itself. Confirm your own position with your Krankenkasse rather than assuming either way.
When and how to register with the Agentur für Arbeit
Two separate registrations exist, they have different deadlines, and missing the first one costs money. Registering as a jobseeker is the early step; registering as unemployed is what actually opens the claim.
- Register as arbeitsuchend (jobseeking) at the latest three months before your job ends. If you learn of the end date with less than three months to run, you have three days from learning it. Missing this is the one-week Sperrzeit under § 159 SGB III.
- Register as arbeitslos (unemployed) no later than your first day of unemployment. This registration cannot be backdated, so registering a few days late simply loses those days of benefit.
- Both steps can be done through the Bundesagentur für Arbeit's online portal, not only in person, and the unemployment registration can be made up to three months ahead of the date it takes effect.
- Have your identity document, your Sozialversicherungsnummer, your Arbeitsbescheinigung from the employer, and your notice or Aufhebungsvertrag ready. A missing Arbeitsbescheinigung is a common cause of a delayed first payment rather than a reduced one.
Why your official Bescheid can differ from this estimate
This calculator applies the statutory formula to one averaged annual salary. The Agentur für Arbeit applies it to your actual insured wage history. Where the two disagree, the reason is almost always one of these.
- Irregular pay across the assessment period. The calculator takes one average; the Agentur uses the real month-by-month insured wages, including one-off payments in the months they fell.
- Fewer than 150 qualifying days, widening the Bemessungsrahmen to two years and pulling older salary into the average.
- Fiktive Bemessung under § 152 SGB III, where a fictional wage from your qualification group replaces your real earnings entirely.
- A different tax class on file at the start of the claim year than the one you entered, which is the single most common cause of a small discrepancy.
- A Sperrzeit or a Ruhenszeit shifting the start date, or shortening the entitlement in the twelve-week case.
- Side income above the 165 € allowance being deducted for the months it was earned.
- A floor from a previous ALG award within the last two years under § 151 Abs. 4 SGB III, which this calculator can apply only if you tell it about the earlier claim.
- Unusual insurance status, such as private health insurance or a period of exemption, which changes the notional deductions.
Sources and methodology
The rates, thresholds and rules on this page come from the legislation and official publications below, checked for 2026. The worked figures and both tables are produced by this site's own calculation engine, which implements §§ 149 to 155 SGB III and, for the notional wage tax, the official BMF Programmablaufplan for the relevant year, tested against that document's published Prüftabelle. The engine works from a single averaged annual wage rather than a real month-by-month wage history, and it does not model the Bemessungsrahmen extension, fiktive Bemessung, or the spousal-child route to the 67 percent rate. This page is general information, not legal or tax advice. For a binding determination of your entitlement, its duration and its amount, rely on your Agentur für Arbeit and the Bescheid it issues.
- § 142 SGB III, qualifying period
- § 147 SGB III, entitlement duration
- § 149 SGB III, the 60 and 67 percent rates
- § 150 SGB III, Bemessungszeitraum and Bemessungsrahmen
- § 151 SGB III, Bemessungsentgelt
- § 152 SGB III, fiktive Bemessung
- § 153 SGB III, Leistungsentgelt and the notional deductions
- § 155 SGB III, side income and the 165 € allowance
- § 158 SGB III, severance and Ruhenszeit
- § 159 SGB III, Sperrzeit
- § 138 SGB III, unemployment and the 15-hour limit
- § 38 SGB III, jobseeker registration deadlines
- § 166 SGB VI, the pension contribution basis while unemployed
- § 170 SGB VI, who bears pension contributions while unemployed
- § 32b EStG, Progressionsvorbehalt
- Merkblatt 1 für Arbeitslose (Bundesagentur für Arbeit)
- Rechengrößen 2026 (GKV-Spitzenverband)
- Programmablaufplan 2026 zur Lohnsteuer (BMF)
Frequently asked questions
Why is my Arbeitslosengeld not 60 percent of my old net salary?
Because the law does not use your old net salary at all. It starts from your insured gross earnings, removes a flat 20 percent for social insurance plus notional wage tax and solidarity surcharge, and applies 60 or 67 percent to what is left. Those deductions are standardised rather than the ones on your payslip, so the figure they produce is usually not the net pay you actually received.
Is Arbeitslosengeld taxable?
Arbeitslosengeld itself is tax-free and nothing is withheld from it, but it is subject to the Progressionsvorbehalt (§ 32b EStG): it is added to your income only to determine the tax rate that then applies to your other taxable income for the year. If your Arbeitslosengeld and any other benefits subject to the Progressionsvorbehalt come to more than 410 € in the calendar year, filing a return is generally mandatory unless you already have to file for another reason. The Agentur für Arbeit reports what it paid you to the tax office, and your Leistungsnachweis shows the figure to declare.
Does a severance payment reduce my Arbeitslosengeld?
Usually not. A severance is not insured wages, so it never raises or lowers your Bemessungsentgelt. It matters only where the employment ended without observing the employer's ordinary notice period: in that case § 158 SGB III makes the claim rest until proper notice would have expired, for at most one year. A severance paid on a properly notified termination does not by itself trigger that § 158 Ruhenszeit. It can still sit alongside a § 159 Sperrzeit, though, depending on how the employment came to an end.
Can I change my tax class to get more Arbeitslosengeld?
Generally no. The class that counts is the one on file as your Lohnsteuerabzugsmerkmal at the start of the year the claim arises. A change between spouses or partners later in that year is recognised only where it matches the ratio of their monthly earnings, or where it lowers the benefit. Planning a year ahead is different, since the class on file on 1 January is the one that will be used.
What is the difference between Arbeitslosengeld and Grundsicherungsgeld (formerly Bürgergeld)?
Arbeitslosengeld (ALG 1) is unemployment insurance: it's based on what you paid in and earned before, time-limited, and doesn't depend on your savings or a partner's income. Grundsicherungsgeld, which replaced Bürgergeld on 1 July 2026, is needs-based basic support: available regardless of insurance history, but means-tested against your assets and household income. It is typically what follows once ALG 1 runs out, or if you never qualified for it.
Can I register for Arbeitslosengeld online?
Yes, both can be done through the Bundesagentur für Arbeit's own online portal rather than only in person, but they are two separate steps with different deadlines. Register as a jobseeker (arbeitsuchend) at the latest three months before your job ends, or within three days of learning the end date if you find out later than that. Register as unemployed (arbeitslos) from up to three months before it takes effect, and at the latest on your first day without employment. The unemployment registration cannot be backdated, so a late one simply costs you those days.
Written and maintained by Basaveswara Rao. Last reviewed on September 14, 2026.