A block of flats under construction in Pasila, Helsinki, on 19 July 2024. The slowdown in construction continues to be reflected in unemployment statistics, but unemployment has crept up also in other sectors of the economy, alarming economists. (Emmi Korhonen – Lehtikuva)
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THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION in Finland has eroded over the past year, reports YLE.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment has revealed that the number of unemployed job seekers stood at 293,300 at the end of June, marking an increase of nearly 29,000 from the previous year and one of 27,000 from the previous month.
A similar picture emerges from the latest batch of employment data from Statistics Finland. The trend of the unemployment rate among 15–74-year-olds has risen by a full percentage point to 8.2 per cent since June 2023. The employment rate among 20–64-year-olds, meanwhile, has fallen by 1.6 points to 78.2 per cent.
The figures do not bode well for Finland.
“This is an indication that the economic slowdown has deepened and lengthened from what we estimated last spring or last autumn,” Mika Maliranta, the managing director of the Labour Institute for Economic Research (Labore), said to YLE on Tuesday.
Unemployment, he viewed, may yet increase.
“In the longer term I’m optimistic, but in the short term I’m somewhat concerned,” he remarked.
Henna Busk, a senior economist at Pellervo Economic Research, has detected some positive signs, too: the ranks of the employed have not continued to thin in the summer months, the increase in the unemployment rate has levelled out and the number of temporary lay-offs is declining modestly.
She viewed that such signs could be an indication of the labour market situation stabilising, although confirmation of any turn for the better will not come until the autumn.
The ranks of the unemployed include especially construction professionals with the construction industry firmly mired in a lull, but also more and more professionals from other sectors. Maliranta has noticed a decline in employment among research and development professionals.
“Employment has weakened more than usual also in occupational, scientific and technical services. People in this sector do work that, in a way, promotes economic growth in future. It’s a worrying sign that research and development activity is starting to decrease,” he commented to the public broadcaster.
Busk, though, estimated that there are no signs that unemployment is becoming a widespread phenomenon.
“Unemployment has mostly affected sectors that deal with construction. The scientific, technical and occupational [services] field includes architect and engineering services, which are connected to construction, and that’s maybe how unemployment has spread there too,” she analysed.
Despite the alarming signs, neither economist is expecting to witness an outright collapse in employment.
“Although the economic turnaround has been delayed, I doubt it has been cancelled,” assured Maliranta. “Labore and other research institutes have estimated that the situation will start improving during the course of this and next year, elevating employment figures in its wake. I’m quite confident that that’ll be the case.”
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
