Record Number of Unemployed Foreigners in Finland

In January, there was a slight decline in the number of unemployed foreigners, with a little more than 42,400 reported. Despite the decline, this figure remains the fifth highest on record and the highest for the month of January.

Cities such as Vantaa reported the highest number of unemployed foreign jobseekers in January since the start of these records.

The number of unemployed foreign jobseekers has significantly increased over this decade. In January 2020, the number was less than 25,400, but there has been a 67 percent increase since then.

The number of unemployed foreigners surged following the onset of the corona pandemic in Finland in March 2020. By April 2020, there were almost 10,000 more foreign unemployed job seekers than in March, with the number remaining considerably higher since then.

The pandemic has adversely affected the entire employment situation in Finland. For instance, between April and May 2020, the rate of unemployed jobseekers in the workforce increased to 16.5 percent. At that time, the proportion of unemployed foreigners among all unemployed job seekers was less than 10 percent.

Since the pandemic, the share of unemployed foreigners among all unemployed job seekers has risen. It peaked in July at over 15 percent, and was at 14.6 percent in January.

Meanwhile, the overall employment situation in Finland has deteriorated further, with the highest proportion of unemployed job seekers in the workforce since July 2021.

The position of immigrants in the Finnish labor market has been a topic of discussion in recent years.

Quivine Ndomo, who recently defended his doctorate, suggested in a February interview with HS that immigrants in Finland often find themselves in a new subcategory.

Ndomo explained that immigrants frequently come to Finland for temporary jobs such as caregiving. Without a permanent employment relationship, they do not receive paid holidays or employer-provided services.

“As long as you are healthy and strong, you can take as many shifts as you want and you can earn well. But if you get sick, you are on your own,” Ndomo said.

His research reveals that many immigrants live under the constant stress of possible deportation at any time.

Similar views were expressed in December by Hanna Sutela, a special researcher at Statistics Finland. In the Tieto & trends blog, she wrote that immigrants are in a weaker position in the labor market compared to Finns. This is evident in the fact that foreigners often do more fixed-term, part-time, temporary, or other types of work than Finns.

“Among those with a foreign background, the proportion of those working on platforms is many times higher than those with Finnish backgrounds – particularly platform-mediated taxi services and courier services are largely dependent on labor with a foreign background,” Sutela wrote.

Sutela noted that in 2021, the employment relationships of people with a foreign background were more often temporary and part-time than those with a Finnish background.

“While almost two-thirds of employed people with a Finnish background were in full-time continuous paid work, i.e. in so-called normal employment relationships in 2021, the corresponding share among employed people with a foreign background was almost 10 percentage points lower,” Sutela wrote.

“The reason for non-standard work is found more often among people with a foreign background than the rest of the population because it has not been possible to get other types of work.”

Sutela also pointed out that the skills of foreigners are often underutilized, with a significant proportion of foreign-background individuals working in jobs that are below their skill level.

“The resources of the workforce with a foreign background are not used not only in terms of skills but also in terms of work input more often than the population with a Finnish background.”

However, Sutela’s perspective on immigrant employment isn’t entirely negative, as she noted that employment of people born abroad appears to have increased more in Finland recently than the average in EU countries.

The rise in the number of unemployed foreigners has also resulted in increased public expenditures.

Foreigners can qualify for Finnish unemployment insurance if they are citizens of an EU or EEA country or Switzerland, are family members of such citizens, or possess a residence permit.