NASpI: Italy's Unemployment Benefit, Who Can Claim and How Much

NASpI, short for Nuova prestazione di Assicurazione Sociale per l'Impiego, is the monthly unemployment benefit paid by INPS, Italy's national social security institute, to employees who lose a job involuntarily. Searching naspi from Italy turns up the INPS portal itself for almost every result: authoritative, but built for filing a claim rather than for understanding what a claim would actually be worth before you file it.

This page focuses on the calculation. It works through who qualifies, how INPS sets the monthly amount, the reduction that applies the longer you claim, and how long the benefit lasts, with a worked example so the mechanics are visible rather than just stated in the abstract.

Information verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual situation.

What NASpI is and who it covers

NASpI replaced the older ASpI and mini-ASpI schemes under D.Lgs. 4 marzo 2015, n. 22. It is available to lavoratori dipendenti, employees, with a few carve outs: permanent employees of public administrations are excluded, and agricultural workers follow their own separate rules under earlier legislation (art. 2, D.Lgs. 22/2015).

The core trigger is involuntary loss of employment: a dismissal, the non renewal of a contract, or a small number of resignation routes the law treats the same way as a dismissal. Those routes are resignation for giusta causa, where the employer's own conduct forced the exit, and a consensual termination reached through the conciliation procedure at art. 7, L. 604/1966 (art. 3, comma 2, D.Lgs. 22/2015).

Eligibility: the two requirements that remain, and the one that does not

Two conditions apply jointly under art. 3, comma 1, D.Lgs. 22/2015. First, you must be in a recognised state of unemployment (stato di disoccupazione), which in practice means registering that status with the employment services. Second, you need at least 13 weeks of contribution in the four years before the unemployment period began.

A third condition existed in the original 2015 text: 30 giornate di lavoro effettivo (30 days of actual work) in the 12 months before the job ended. That requirement was removed by a later amendment, comma 1-bis of the same article, which states plainly that it "ceases to apply" for unemployment events from 1 January 2022 onward. A page that still lists the 30 day rule as current is describing law that stopped applying in 2022, a correction worth making since it circulates widely on Italian and English language sites alike.

Registering the stato di disoccupazione is a separate administrative step from filing the NASpI claim itself, normally done online through the employment services (centro per l'impiego) system, and it is worth completing promptly since the NASpI claim depends on it. Losing track of this step is one of the more common reasons a claim gets delayed even when the worker clearly qualifies on the substance.

The 2025 rule for a resignation followed by a later dismissal

A newer condition, comma 1-bis (lettera c-bis) of art. 3, targets a specific sequence: quitting a permanent job voluntarily, then losing a later job involuntarily and trying to claim NASpI off that second loss. For unemployment events from 1 January 2025, a worker in that position needs at least 13 weeks of contribution accrued between the earlier voluntary resignation and the later involuntary cessation.

The rule only applies if the earlier resignation happened in the 12 months before the involuntary job loss being claimed. It does not apply to a resignation for giusta causa, to an art. 7, L. 604/1966 conciliated exit, or to a resignation protected under the maternity and paternity rules at art. 55, D.Lgs. 151/2001. The purpose is to stop a worker from resigning strategically from a stable job, taking brief involuntary work elsewhere, and using that short second job to unlock NASpI off the resignation itself.

How much: the 75% and 25% formula

Art. 4, comma 1, D.Lgs. 22/2015 sets the starting point as an average monthly reference wage: your retribuzione imponibile ai fini previdenziali (taxable pay for social security purposes) across the last four years, divided by the number of contribution weeks in that period, multiplied by 4,33 (the average number of weeks in a month).

From that average monthly wage, comma 2 applies a two tier formula. Where the wage is at or below a threshold set annually and indexed to ISTAT inflation data, NASpI equals 75% of the wage. Where the wage exceeds the threshold, NASpI equals 75% of the threshold plus 25% of the amount above it, and the result can never exceed an annual ceiling (massimale), also indexed each January.

These figures move every January with ISTAT price data, so a page that quotes a NASpI amount without a year attached is already out of date. The 2026 figures above were verified on 20 July 2026 against INPS's own circolare numero 4 del 28 gennaio 2026, which set the 2026 values.

Worked example: computing a monthly amount

Take a worker whose average monthly reference wage, computed the way art. 4 requires, comes to 1.800 euro. That figure is above the 2026 soglia of 1.456,72 euro, so the two tier formula applies rather than the flat 75%.

75% of the 1.456,72 euro threshold is 1.092,54 euro. The amount above the threshold is 1.800 minus 1.456,72, or 343,28 euro, and 25% of that is 85,82 euro. Add the two pieces together: 1.092,54 plus 85,82 comes to 1.178,36 euro a month, well under the 1.584,70 euro ceiling, so the ceiling does not reduce it further.

That 1.178,36 euro figure is the starting monthly amount before the reduction described next. Realistically, most claimants land somewhere in this middle band: the flat 75% only applies below the threshold, and the ceiling only bites for wages well above it.

Décalage: why the amount shrinks over time

Art. 4, comma 3 reduces the monthly amount by 3% every month, starting from the first day of the sixth month of payment for most claimants, or from the first day of the eighth month for a claimant who is 55 or older on the date they applied. The reduction compounds: each month's payment is 3% lower than the previous month, not 3% lower than the original amount.

Applied to the 1.178,36 euro example above, the taper looks like this for a claimant under 55:

The reduction continues for as long as the claim runs. A claimant 55 or older on the application date gets two extra months at the full rate before the same 3% monthly reduction begins.

Duration: how many months the benefit lasts

Art. 5 sets the duration at half the number of contribution weeks counted in the four years before the job ended. Because only four years of history is ever counted, and four years is 208 weeks, the maximum possible duration works out to 104 weeks, or 24 months.

A worker with, for example, 160 weeks of contribution in the relevant four year window, a little over three years of employment spread across that period, would receive NASpI for 80 weeks, about 18 and a half months, before payments stop entirely, regardless of how far the décalage has reduced the monthly figure by then.

The 68 day deadline

Art. 6 requires the claim to be filed online with INPS within 68 days of the employment ending. NASpI is payable from the eighth day after the job ends, or, if the claim is filed after that eighth day, from the day after the claim is filed rather than retroactively.

Filing after the 68 day window generally forfeits the benefit for that job loss, so treat this deadline as fixed rather than approximate. Filing promptly within the window also avoids losing days of payment to the gap between the job ending and the claim being filed.

NASpI does not renew automatically once it runs out, and it does not resume automatically if a new short job also ends. Each new period of unemployment needs its own claim, tested again against the eligibility rules above using the contribution record that applies at that later date, which is one reason the 13 week and stato di disoccupazione requirements matter every time, not just the first time.

Two examples: a lower earner and a higher earner

The two tier formula behaves differently depending on where your average monthly wage falls relative to the 2026 soglia of 1.456,72 euro. It helps to see both sides of that line side by side.

A worker whose average monthly reference wage is 1.200 euro sits below the threshold, so NASpI is simply 75% of that wage: 900,00 euro a month, before the décalage described below. A worker whose average monthly reference wage is 2.600 euro sits well above the threshold, so NASpI is 75% of 1.456,72 euro (1.092,54 euro) plus 25% of the amount over the threshold, which is 2.600 minus 1.456,72, or 1.143,28 euro; 25% of that is 285,82 euro. The total is 1.092,54 plus 285,82, or 1.378,36 euro a month, still below the 1.584,70 euro ceiling.

Only a worker whose calculated figure would otherwise exceed 1.584,70 euro is affected by the ceiling at all. In practice that requires a fairly high average monthly wage, since the 25% marginal rate above the threshold means the ceiling is reached only well into six figure annual pay.

Contribution weeks already used do not count twice

Art. 5 also excludes, from the duration calculation, any contribution weeks that already gave rise to a previous unemployment benefit payment. If part of your four year contribution history was already used to support an earlier NASpI or predecessor benefit claim, those weeks are not counted again toward a new claim's duration.

This matters for anyone who has claimed unemployment benefits more than once in the same four year window. The practical effect is that duration is based on contribution that has not already been drawn on, not simply on the raw number of weeks worked.

If you resign instead of being dismissed

An ordinary resignation, without giusta causa and outside the art. 7, L. 604/1966 procedure, does not open a NASpI claim, because NASpI is built around involuntary unemployment. This surprises many workers who assume any job separation qualifies.

What does not change is severance pay. TFR accrues every year of employment and is owed whenever the relationship ends, for any reason, including an ordinary resignation. See our companion page on Italian severance pay (TFR) for how that separate, unrelated lump sum is calculated.

What this page does not decide

INPS alone determines eligibility and the exact amount for an individual claim, based on the contribution record it holds and the specific circumstances of the job loss. The formulas and figures above let you build a realistic estimate before applying; they are not a substitute for INPS's own determination once a claim is filed.

For the wider landscape of Italian law this site covers, see our Italy hub.