The Day My Salary Disappeared
By Seun Sylvester | Strategy | April 25, 2026
Since I began my professional career in 2012, I had never truly experienced what it meant to lose a job.
Through the banking sector with its pressures, targets, and constant performance reviews, I somehow remained standing. In environments where “weight is shed” regularly, I navigated through.
I assumed, quietly, that I understood job security.
Until I arrived in Canada.
A Second Job… And Then a Call
Like many immigrants, I picked up a second job.
Not because I had to, but because I wanted to:
- make extra cash
- clear a few bills
- create a bit more breathing room
The schedule was not easy.
Four nights on.
Four nights off.
It was hectic. Draining. Disruptive.
But it was working.
Until it wasn’t.
One Call. One Letter. That Was It.
A few months in, I got a call.
Then came the letter.
Termination.
One month pay in lieu.
Just like that.
No long story.
No gradual decline.
No warning that felt meaningful.
The income stopped.
And that is where the real story begins.
A Strange Relief That Didn’t Last
What surprised me wasn’t the loss.
It was the relief.
The job was exhausting. The nights were long. My body felt it.
So part of me was glad it ended.
But that relief is a short-lived thing.
Because within days, maybe hours, the relief gives way to arithmetic.
You start doing the numbers in your head. What comes in. What goes out. What the gap looks like. And the gap has a way of making relief feel very naive, very quickly.
The income was gone. The bills were not.
Enter Employment Insurance
Now, one thing Canada gets right and I want to say this genuinely, is Employment Insurance [EI].
EI exists precisely for moments like this. When employment ends through no fault of your own, the system steps in. It is a net. A real one. And as someone who came from a country where no such net exists, I do not take it lightly.
I am grateful for it.
But gratitude doesn’t mean it’s without questions.
Because as I sat with the reality of my situation, I started wondering:
How much does EI actually cover?
Does it cover your rent? Your mortgage? Your car payment, groceries, utilities, and the other bills you committed to before any of this happened?
I honestly did not know the full picture. And I suspect most people don’t until they need it.
EI is typically calculated as a percentage of your insurable earnings. It is not your full salary. It is a fraction of it. And it comes with a maximum. Which means if your bills were sized to your income, EI may not be sized to your bills.
And then there is the other question:
Will it last until you find the next job?
The answer is: it depends. On how long you worked. On your region. On how quickly you find new employment. There are weeks of eligibility, but those weeks are finite. The clock is ticking even when your job search is not going the way you hoped.
So yes EI is a gift. A real, meaningful buffer that many countries do not offer.
But it is a bridge, not a destination. And the bridge has a length. You need to know how long it is before you start walking.
Salary Can Stop Without Notice
For the first time, I felt something I had only understood intellectually before:
Salary is not security.
It is continuity until it is not.
And what sits beneath it when it stops, EI, savings, a side business, a partner’s income, that is the real measure of your financial resilience.
Not what you earn.
What remains when the earning stops.
The Illusion We Carry
In Nigeria, especially with government roles, there is a sense of permanence.
You get the job.
You stay.
You retire.
There is an unspoken assumption: “Nothing can really happen.”
But in Canada, and increasingly across the world that assumption does not hold.
We’ve seen:
federal job cuts
provincial workforce reductions
high paying technology jobs cut
restructuring across sectors
Even roles we once considered “safe” are being reviewed.
So What Is Actually Secure?
It made me begin to ask uncomfortable questions:
Are there truly “secure” jobs anymore?
Outside of doctors, nurses, teachers, and maybe security roles… what is guaranteed?
Is job security real or just assumed?
If your income depends on your continued employment… how stable is it really?
The Quiet Truth
Most people don’t lose their jobs suddenly.
But the possibility is always there.
And that is enough to rethink everything.
Because if your entire financial life depends on:
showing up
performing
being retained
…then your stability is tied to something you don’t fully control.
Experience Teaches Differently
Before this moment, I “knew” these things.
But knowing is different from experiencing.
There is a clarity that comes when something actually happens to you, when it moves from concept to consequence.
You stop thinking in theory.
You start thinking in structure.
And yes, my sleep was disrupted too. For months, my body hadn’t caught up with the fact that the night shifts were over. I would wake at 2am, alert, for no reason. That part was real.
But it was a footnote.
The main chapter was income. Its presence. Its absence. And what you do about the gap.
A Different Way to Think
This experience didn’t make me fearful.
It made me more aware.
It raised a different kind of question:
What am I building that does not depend entirely on my employment?
Not to replace work.
But to reduce dependence on it.
Because EI is a system. Savings is a strategy. Assets, hard or soft that generates income is a different category entirely.
That is income that doesn’t require your continued employment to continue.
Final Reflection
Life is shaped by experiences.
Some come quietly.
Some come suddenly.
But all of them, if we pay attention, teach us something.
For me, this one was simple and layered at the same time:
The income stopped.
Canada’s EI system helped. I am glad it exists. But it raised as many questions as it answered.
And it confirmed something I now believe deeply:
A salary is borrowed stability.
The day it stops, you find out very quickly what you actually built underneath it.
Which is why every professional, immigrant or not, junior or senior, must eventually ask:
If my salary stops… what continues?
Should I re-evaluate my career choices to more resilient sectors?
What am I building toward?
Just a reflection for the weekend.
8 responses to “The Day My Salary Disappeared”
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Salary, like many other conditions in life ain’t permanent. A few ways to hedge against a sudden loss of Salary and income is having residual income from a recession proof business, investment and multi level marketing. Start today on that residual income generation pipeline!
“Start today on that residual income generation pipeline”, that’s not just encouragement, that’s a directive. And the earlier you start, the more runway you have. The people who weather job loss best aren’t the ones who react fastest, they’re the ones who prepared earliest.
Life is shaped by experiences. This is deep. Secondly, having one source of income, is not so safe, except with God’s help.
Life is truly shaped by experiences. And this one reshaped how I think about income entirely. One stream is fragile, not because God can’t sustain it, but because wisdom calls us to build well. Proverbs 27:23 says it plainly: know the state of your flocks. In today’s terms, know the state of your income streams.
Interestingly, I have experienced this twice.
The major saving grace is that I had saved about two years of living expenses.
EI is a great concept but better get a job in 6months.
In all, the closer you are to being in control of what and when you earn, the “safer” you are.
“The closer you are to being in control of what and when you earn, the safer you are”, that is the whole thesis. You said it better than I did. Ownership of income is the only real security. Everything else is borrowed time.
Life abroad has taught me to make good investments which can help in rainy days. Even with EI just ensure to get a job within 6 months and again it is ONLY a substitute as it can’t cover your bills.
This is wisdom earned, not borrowed.
Life abroad has a way of teaching financial discipline that comfort never would. You learn quickly that the safety nets here as good as they are were never designed to replace your income. EI is a bridge, not a landing pad. Still we remain grateful for EI.
Thank you for adding this. Someone reading this thread needed to hear it exactly this way.