And a laid-off worker who collected $12,000 in unemployment pay might have received only $7,000 or so.
The largest part of the current welfare budget is paid out on national insurance benefits - such as old-age pensions and unemployment pay.
Initial claims for unemployment pay jumped in the week ended July 7.
Benefits like job security rules, high unemployment pay, paid medical care and early retirement are considered hard-won achievements.
She will be eligible for unemployment pay for six months more, but what then?
Meanwhile they have all the benefits of West German social security - unemployment pay, health insurance and so on.
If they lost their jobs, unemployment pay would amount to 60 percent of that.
Materially, the suffering was not too bad: her husband still had a job, and she was drawing unemployment pay.
Let the company fail and they'd suck unemployment pay out of his taxes.
Benefits: Early unions would give their members unemployment pay in case they were hurt on the job, unfairly fired, or sick.