Survey: Half of people in labour market believe Finland needs more foreign labour

Half of the labour market believe that Finland needs more workers from abroad, a Working Life Survey commissioned by Suomen Yrittäjät, the Finnish SME association, indicates.

Respondents thought that a smoother residence permit process and tools to boost Finnish and Swedish skills in workplaces were the most important methods to integrate workers from abroad into the workforce and the workplace. Suomen Yrittäjät calls for concrete actions to speed up labour immigration, such as tax credits for international specialists’ immigration costs.

Around a third (32%) oppose an increase in the foreign labour force. Just under a fifth (18%) is unable to state an opinion on the matter.

Around a fifth (21%) thinks that their own workplace needs employees from abroad. Two thirds disagree. People aged 18–29, people in senior positions and clerical workers assess the need for foreign labour the highest. Non-clerical employees, business owners and the unemployed see the least need for foreign labour.

“Almost 75% of businesses say they experience labour shortages and 300,000 people are either unemployed or laid off. Matching supply and demand is one of the most vexing problems on our labour market. In addition to effective continuing training, we need extensive investments to recruit foreign workers,” Aicha Manai, Network Manager at Suomen Yrittäjät, says.

Methods exist

Respondents thought that streamlining labour migrants’ residence permit processes and putting tools in place at work to boost Finnish and Swedish linguistic skills were the most important methods in achieving the goal of integrating employees from abroad into the workforce.

Multimodal leadership skills and strengthening a workplace’s capability to function bilingually or multilingually were also raised. Around 70% of people in employment considered them important.

“In addition to structural reforms, it would be good if workplaces and society more broadly had a realistic conversation about what the diverse work of the future will look like. We support employers in this transformation by educating businesses on leading multilingual workplaces,” Manai says.

“It’s good that the Finnish Immigration Service is making its residence permit processes more efficient. A functional permit system is a minimum requirement. Of respondents to the working life survey, 71% considered streamlining the residence permit process important or very important.

“For example, international students should get a partial tax credit and a permanent residence permit on their tuition fees if they stay in Finland for work. Suomen Yrittäjät proposes that the Government sets quantitative goals for labour and study immigration and measures its actions accordingly.”

You can read the results of the Working Life Survey in more detail here.

How the survey was conducted

The Working Life Survey was conducted by Kantar Public Oy on behalf of Suomen Yrittäjät. 
The survey received 1,511 responses, of whom 1,028 were in the labour market (employees, business owners, laid off and unemployed). The survey was conducted between 19 and 26 January 2023. 
The data represent the Finnish residents on the labour market in the target group. The survey data are representative of the population in terms of gender, age and place of residence. 
The target group of the survey was taken from the national Forum online panel. 
The results’ confidence interval for the entire result (n=1,028) is ±3.1% at the 50% result level.

Are you already a Suomen Yrittäjät member? Read more about member benefits and advantages!