Self-Employed Workers Can Apply for Employment Insurance Enrollment and Premium Support 'All at Once'

Partial Amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Small Business Act Approved at the Cabinet Meeting
Memorandum of Understanding Signed with the Ministry of Employment and Labor on August 29

Small business owners will be able to apply for self-employed workers' employment insurance enrollment and employment insurance premium support at the same time.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that the partial amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Small Business Act containing this content was approved at the Cabinet meeting on the 15th.

'Self-employed workers' employment insurance' is a system that provides unemployment benefits and other support to self-employed individuals who involuntarily close their businesses due to natural disasters such as typhoons, floods, heavy snow, illness or injury based on a doctor's opinion, or six consecutive months of deficit, while they engage in reemployment or re-entrepreneurship activities. The eligible applicants are business owners employing fewer than 50 workers. Depending on the insurance enrollment period, they can receive job-seeking benefits ranging from 1.09 million to 2.02 million KRW per month for up to seven months. The 'Small Business Owners Employment Insurance Premium Support' primarily provides support covering 50-80% of the insurance premiums for small business owners enrolled in the self-employed workers' employment insurance for up to five years.

However, until now, the two systems have been operated separately by the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service and the Small Enterprise and Market Service. Accordingly, there have been voices from small business owners in the field requesting a system reform to enable unified processing of enrollment in self-employed workers' employment insurance and applications for premium support.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups signed a business agreement with the Ministry of Employment and Labor on August 29 to improve the application procedure for employment insurance premium support for small business owners, resolve inconveniences during the premium support application process, and strengthen the social safety net by expanding employment insurance enrollment. Through this, the amendment to the Enforcement Decree of the Small Business Act to establish the legal basis for processing unique identification information necessary for the unification of employment insurance premium support applications was approved at the Cabinet meeting.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to revise the related employment insurance premium support application forms. The Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service and the Small Enterprise and Market Service will each reorganize the self-employed workers' employment insurance enrollment system and the small business owners' employment insurance premium support application system by next month.

Oh Young-joo, Minister of SMEs and Startups, said, “We expect that simplifying the employment insurance premium support application procedure for small business owners will provide practical help to them,” and added, “We will continue to prepare and implement various policies to strengthen the social safety net for small business owners.”