As Finland grapples with a soaring unemployment rate and a shrinking pool of vacancies, jobseekers are reporting gruelling job hunts lasting months or even years.
The situation is particularly cutthroat for foreign residents in Finland, who have to contend with a smaller pool of opportunities.
On top of that new, stricter rules on residence permits threaten to set a shorter deadline for job searches. A proposed law would force many foreigners with work-based residence permits to leave the country after three months if they fail to find a new job.
In April, the number of foreign citizens among unemployed job seekers totalled 41,300, an increase of 6,300 from the previous year, according to government data.
International jobseekers in Finland face significant hurdles due to the language barrier, employers’ inherent biases or just having foreign-sounding names.
Shreyas Ramachandran Srinivasan, a robotics engineer turned project manager who lost his job over a year ago, said he has had to live with the constant fear of being forced to leave Finland.
“When my company could no longer support my employment three months before my residence permit was to expire, I was scrambling for a job that could help me stay in this country. It was akin to being subject to the three-month rule before it was even enforced,” he said.
Shreyas Ramachandran Srinivasan says the three-month rule has caused him much stress. Image: Courtesy of David Caceres.
Srinivasan got a six-month extension to his residence permit by enrolling in a labour market training program at Aalto University Executive Education and Professional Development which involved an apprenticeship with a partner company for six months.
“I worked for six months without pay, apart from the benefit I got from the unemployment fund. At the end of half a year, which was a very long time for a company to decide if they wanted to hire me, I didn’t get employed and was back to square one — looking for a job before my permit ran out again,” he said.
Srinivasan has been a vocal critic of the government’s proposals to tighten permanent residence permits ever since they were announced.
In one of his recent posts that gained traction online, he shared how this anxiety-ridden journey has driven him to depression.
“Yes, I am a “failure”… I could not find work in the limited deadline that was assigned to me by Universe and Finland… I tried my best and when I failed, I was depressed, su*cidal (sic), due to societal conditioning and the reactions from my loved ones, who were supposed to support me,” he wrote.
Srinivasan finally breathed a sigh of relief when he signed an employment contract last week, 14 months after he first started looking for a job. He hopes that he can apply for citizenship this year to help permanently secure his future in Finland.
Three-month-rule to be enforced by spring 2025
As a reaction to the public outcry and criticism that broke out after the government announced its plan to tighten residence permits, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment now plans to organise a public hearing in English to discuss this subject.
“When the government announced its programme, the wording was harsh,” admitted Jarmo Tiukkanen, a senior Ministerial Adviser for Labour Migration and Integration.
In mid-June, the ministry announced that the consultation round on the three-month unemployment rule had begun. The state also said the programme deviates slightly from the government’s original proposal.
The jobseeking period would be six months instead of three months for specialists and startup entrepreneurs as well as for all workers who have lived in Finland for longer than two years with a work-based residence permit.
“We plan to have a public hearing in August which will be conducted in English, and open to all. At the session, I will present the government proposal, and offer an overview of how it will look in practice and how it would affect the economy. We want people to be able to ask questions and have open discussions,” he said.
According to Tiukkanen, the government plans to implement the rule in the spring of 2025.
The latest data from Statistics Finland revealed the average duration of job search for unemployed jobseekers is 63 weeks.
Youssef Zad, Chief Economist at Finnish Startup Community, has been outspoken in his criticism of the government proposal. He is not too optimistic about changes to the plans.
He noted that this problematic proposal would cast a shadow of uncertainty over immigrant workers’ futures in Finland. The proposal also dictates that companies laying off workers will now be obliged to report this information to Finland’s immigration authority Migri.
“In my pessimistic view, a public session is just theatre, there won’t be too much change at this point. All the important parameters are already most likely defined. This is the government saying we hear you, and that’s it,” he said.
Applicants compete with hundreds of candidates
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the number of unfilled vacancies in April 2024 plummeted to 114,500, which is 55,900 fewer than the previous year. Meanwhile, the ranks of unemployed jobseekers swelled to 275,300, marking an increase of 29,200 from a year earlier.
Job hunters in Finland complain that their applications are either met with resounding silence or generic rejections. The competition is fierce, with hundreds of candidates vying for any open position.
“It feels like mission impossible,” said Elena A, who said she has sent 200 job applications since she lost her job nine months ago.
She has lived in Finland for 20 years and can speak more than three languages including Finnish, English and Russian. She has work experience in export, sales, marketing, customer service and project management. She has also completed several business education diploma programmes over the past few years to keep herself relevant and employable.
“I speak good Finnish, but of course, I can’t lose my accent. I don’t even get responses to the countless applications that I send out in the hope of at least finding an internship or a summer job. I am competing with hundreds of candidates applying to any given role,” she said.
As the Finnish workforce enters its summer holiday period, most recruitment processes are now on pause until autumn.
Ministry data shows that the number of long-term unemployed, those without a job for at least a year, reached 92,300, marking an increase of 7,700 from the previous year.
Jobseekers turn to professional networks for help
Many professionals are turning to LinkedIn to share their experiences, hoping to strike a chord with peers in the industry, increase their visibility on the network and get leads to opportunities.
Marianne Winter, an HR professional unemployed for four months, began sharing her jobseeking journey on LinkedIn earlier this year. Her posts chronicle her struggles and the toll this ordeal has taken on her mental state, sparking hundreds of comments and reactions from fellow job seekers.
“My hope was to connect with others in similar situations and get leads from my network on hidden job opportunities that aren’t publicly advertised. I have received so many comments from people in the same boat as me and I have heard horror stories of those who have been looking for jobs for even years,” she said.
Marianne Winter, a human resources professional, has been out of work for months. Image: Courtesy of Marianne Winter.
Marianne has sent more than 50 applications in four months and managed to get only a few interviews.
“The worst part is the toll it takes on your mental state — the constant stress of waking up each morning, creating cover letters and sending applications, only to hear nothing back is soul-crushing. For any job I apply to, there is an average of 150+ applicants. I’ve heard of a case where 2,000 applications were submitted for a single job. This is an unreasonably competitive market,” she said.
Recruiters struggle with high applicant volume
On the flip side, recruiters in Finland are grappling with the opposite challenge: sifting through hundreds of applications for every open role.
“As of May, we have had 18 roles open this year in Helsinki and we have received 2,537 applications — that’s a 143-percent increase from the number of applications we received last season. It is a highly competitive market,” said Anusha Ramakrishnan, Head of Talent Acquisition at Sievo.
Recruiter said companies are adopting a conservative approach to hiring in an uncertain economic environment. The limited number of open roles is inundated with applications. Recruiters also revealed that despite the number of applications, they limit the first round of interviews to seven to eight candidates to keep the process more manageable.
“It’s been a different kind of hard in this market. Three years ago, it was very difficult to find someone for a specialised or senior role, with far fewer candidates available in the open market, especially in the tech industry, where everyone was constantly hiring. Now, there are too many applications to choose from,” revealed Samuli Salonen, CEO and founder of talent acquisition company TalentBee.
Salonen revealed that about 70 percent of the senior, harder-to-fill positions are filled through targeted headhunting, which often proves more efficient and less cumbersome than setting up recruitment processes.
According to Youssef Zad, the current job market, though dismal, paints a more realistic picture of how things are to be in Finland.
“Looking back at the labour market situation a few years ago, there was an abnormally huge demand for workers, especially in the tech industry. Now, we are returning to a more typical situation, which is more realistic for Finland. We are not going back to that period of significant growth. Now the recovery will be slower, and workers must adapt to the new normal,” Zad said.
The Employment Ministry predicts that the situation will worsen further this year before there is hope of things looking up.
A labour market forecast published in May estimated that the number of people unemployed in the long term will reach its peak towards the end of 2024, after which long-term unemployment is estimated to decline slowly.
The average number of unemployed jobseekers is also expected to decrease to 269,000 in 2025, and to 267,000 in 2026.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.