Finland is witnessing The number of employees has fallen significantly, falling by nearly 3% in December compared to a year ago, according to the Ilmanen Economic Index. This trend is particularly pronounced in certain sectors, such as human resources leasing and construction, and more acutely in regions such as eastern and northern Finland.
The Ilmanen Economic Index, a tool to measure the state of the Finnish economy, reflects changes in more than 60,000 companies and around 500,000 employees.
The number of employees decreased by 2.8% in December, a sharper decline than the 2.3% decline in November. Notably, the only sector that showed growth was communications and information technology, with a modest increase of 0.5%.
This negative trend in the Ilmanen index accelerated in December, indicating that employment is a lagging indicator in the economic downturn. “Finland is facing difficult times due to high inflation and rapid accumulation of public debt in major EU countries.Finland is already in recession and the situation will not improve with a decline in industrial orders and exports. “However, current forecasts suggest that this recession could continue and be relatively short-lived, depending on the global economy and major economies such as the United States.” Jouni Vatanenresearcher at Ilmarinen.
The beginning of the year doesn’t have much good news for employees. Distrust between trade unions and the government and the emphasis on pay moderation in salary negotiations further compound the challenge.
According to the index, the sectors with the largest declines were human resources leasing (-13.0%), construction (-9.8%), hospitality (-4.4%), trade (-3.2%), transportation (-2.5%), and industrial. was. (-0.8%).
“The low level of new housing starts has inevitably led to a decline in employment in the construction sector. This contraction has also affected other sectors, such as labor leasing, logistics and services,” Vatanen said.
By region, a decrease in the number of workers was observed in all regions in December, with the largest decrease in eastern Finland (-5.2%) and the smallest in western Finland (-5.2%). 3.2%).
In southern Finland, the industry, communications and IT sectors grew, while other sectors, such as human resources leasing, construction, hospitality, transport and trade, were in decline. A similar pattern was observed in Western Finland, where only telecommunications, IT and industry grew.
Eastern Finland faced declines in all monitored sectors, including human resources leasing, hospitality, trade, construction, industry, transport, communications and IT. In northern Finland, only the transport industry showed growth, while other sectors such as human resources leasing, construction, industry, and communications/IT decreased.
The Ilmanen Economic Index has been published since 2013 and is based on data from more than 60,000 client companies from a variety of sectors that report payroll information in their income ledgers. The index reflects changes in the number of employees compared to the previous year and takes into account companies that have been customers of Ilmanen throughout the observation period.
HT