Well, for being on welfare, at least in Canada they want you to be a bum. What I mean by this is the following. If you own a house, they might want you to sell it. If you have any savings and other assets, they want you to use all of that up before you are aloud to be on welfare. You don't go through this nonsense with unemployment.
Most of the time, welfare is less money than unemployment. This makes another disadvantage of welfare.
Both services if you find a job and make money they make deductions, but there are difference for both services. For unemployment if you work more than 35 hrs per week, or if your earning with your new job is higher than what you collect for unemployment, you don't collect anything for that week. Let say in this example the person was not allowed to collect for a reporting period based on their earnings. They have 30 weeks left for their claim. Those 30 remaining weeks can be used at a later date when the person income is lower or have no income. However, if the remaining weeks are not used before the end date of the claim, the remaining unused weeks you can't collect. What I mean by the end date of claim is the last date you are aloud to collect unemployment before they close your file.
For welfare, once you make a certain amount, they won't help you with any money for the following month since they pay by the monthly bases. This can be a major problem and I explain why. You have been working for a while and you're not able to collect welfare for the new month. Let say the new month is November. In the middle of November, you lose your job. You don't find work for a while. You then do your reporting for December. Because the person lost their job in the middle of the November and didn't collect welfare for that month, they will have a two week period of November they had no access to money. Then the money you collect in December, they make deductions on what you can collect for that month. Let say you normally get $600 per month for welfare, but based on deductions of income earned in November, they are only going to give you $300. You still haven't found a job. Not just your short of $300 for December, you are also short of two weeks of money in November of not earning an income after a job lost. So basically, if you get a job, and then lose a job while on welfare, your finances can be ****ed up if you can understand my example in this paragraph. This is why I was stress earlier this year because didn't want to be on welfare and I'm very happy I prevented this.
However, there could be some benefits being on welfare, at least in Canada. They will help with medical expenses such as prescriptions, glasses, bus passes, etcs which unemployment does not help with. So basically it depends on the situations. But in most cases, welfare is worse than unemployment. If you not able to follow the above and if you don't understand finances well, then this might not make any sense to you.
