There is a quarantine period of a couple of months if you quit. You have to be looking for a job, which means submitting reports of what jobs you have applied for to the job exchange. There are quite severe restrictions on what you can do while on unemployment, but if you want to do a startup there is likely some program that allows you to get the money and do that.

If you quit, as opposed to being fired, you have to wait three months before being able to apply. You have to prove applying for jobs as well.

Doesn't that just encourage people to get fired instead of quitting?

(German here, but pretty much the same situation.)

Not really. It's really hard to try and get fired, since the employees are protected pretty well. So in order to get fired you would have to mess up pretty bad, to a point where you would usually leave a lot of scorched earth, so very few people do that.

If you are on good terms with the company you can also "get fired" (I've heard of that in a few startups), so you can collect the benefits, but that only works in a small set of companys I think.

If you're fired for cause, they deny unemployment benefits.

You can't just stop doing your job, show up drunk, and yell obscenities at your boss all day. Well, you can, but you probably won't get unemployment benefits.

If you show up drunk or with anger management problems, the company is by law required to provide you with professional help. If that doesn't work, they can fire you and your benefits kick in from day 1.

Are you positive? I checked with Google and I may have the wrong keywords, but I'm not seeing that as a law in the United States.

Sadly, I have not just one - but two friends who have lost their jobs for showing up incapacitated. One wasn't alcohol, though. They were stuffed full of amphetamines - but the first one was drunk. Neither mentioned any employer offers of rehab.

Sorry about the confusion, I was talking about Sweden

It's all good. Employees don't get nearly as much protection here. I see that as a negative.