Artists often receive their income from various sources: partly from work done as an employee and partly from their own artistic work. The relative proportions of these can vary. TE Office staff are usually well aware of this characteristic of artistic work.
Just because you do some work as an artist does not mean that you are not eligible for unemployment benefits. If you are categorised as an entrepreneur by the TE Office, they will assess if your artistic activities equate to full-time or part-time work. If you work full-time as an artist, you are not eligible for unemployment benefits. If you only work as an artist part time, you may be eligible for an unemployment benefit adjusted to your other income.
Your work is considered full-time when it takes up sufficient time that you are unable to accept a full-time job. The decisive factor in determining if you employ yourself as a full-time or part-time artist is the number of hours your work requires. Your artistic activities can be considered part time if they require only relatively few hours.
The TE Office will take all available information into account when deciding on the extent of your employment with regards to your artistic work. Your own report on your working hours may be enough.
If you are only starting your career as an artist, the number of hours you work can be sufficiently few that you are regarded as a part-time artist. The TE Office may regard any artistic activities that you started during your unemployment as part-time work if it is evident that the hours worked are sufficiently few, not just that your income is low.
A low income is not relevant when your availability for a full-time job is assessed. Even unprofitable activities can take up sufficient time to mean that you are not available to accept a full-time job.
Your artistic activities may be considered part-time work based on your past employment history if it is shown that you have worked as an artist and held another job during the same time period. In practice, your artistic activities will be regarded as part-time work if you simultaneously held a full-time job for at least six months or a part-time job with a sufficient number of working hours to meet the work requirement set for employees.
If you have been partly employed by someone else and partly self-employed as an artist, your artistic activities will most likely be seen as part-time work under situations in which there are regular breaks to your employment relationship that are typical of the type of job in question. Such breaks can regularly be faced by, for example, substitute teachers or the staff of adult learning centres due to their long summer and other breaks. Moreover, it is normal for teachers’ not to have sufficient working hours to meet the work requirement some days of the week.
Your artistic activities can be regarded as part-time work on the basis of them requiring few working hours, as long as you do not expand your activities. If your activities expand after having become unemployed, the TE Office will assess if they still equate to part-time work.
If you have studied full time for at least six months and have made sufficient progress with your studies, you can use this as evidence of your artistic activities being part time.
If the TE Office regards your artistic activities as part-time work, they will provide you with an unemployment benefit eligibility statement that reflects this. Normally, the statement is applicable for an indefinite period.
However, unemployed jobseekers are always obliged to notify the authorities if their operations expand. The TE Office may request that you report on any changes to your artistic business activities. If there are changes, you may be issued with a new unemployment benefit eligibility statement.
If you were previously fully employed by your artistic activities, you have to either stop working as an artist or completely end your artistic business activities in order to be eligible for unemployment benefits.