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“It is already widely recognized that we need an impressive number of people to come to the country,” Saku Tihverainen of Talented Solutions told AFP.
Workers are needed to “help cover the costs of an aging generation,” he explained.
Although slow population growth is observed in many western countries, Finland is feeling the effects of such demographic developments almost acutely.
According to the United Nations, there are 39.2 people over the age of 65 in Finland for every 100 people of working age, and the country ranks second after Japan, with the dependency ratio forecast to rise to 47.5 in 2030.
The government has warned that 5.5 million. The country’s population needs to almost double its immigration rate to 20-30 thousand. people per year in order to maintain public services and avoid the looming deficit of the pension system.
In various international rankings for quality of life, freedom and gender equality, low levels of corruption, low crime and pollution, Finland, which ranks high on paper, might seem like an attractive place to live.
However, the country with the most homogeneous society in Western Europe also has widespread anti-immigrant sentiment and a reluctance to employ outsiders, and the Finnish far-right opposition party continues to receive significant support during the elections.
Still, business and government “have finally reached a tipping point and are recognizing the challenge” posed by an aging population, said Charles Mathies, a researcher at the Finnish Academy of Sciences.
Ch. Mathies is one of the experts consulted on the government’s fourth-year talent program, which aims to increase the country’s international appeal through measures to recruit foreigners in Finland.
The program is aimed, among others, at healthcare professionals from Spain, metal industry workers from Slovakia, and IT and shipping experts from Russia, India and Southeast Asia.
Previous efforts to attract more skilled labor from abroad have been unsuccessful.
In 2013, five of the eight Spanish nurses working in the western Finnish town of Vasa left a few months later, explaining that the decision was made because of high prices, cold and difficult language.
However, immigration in Finland has outpaced emigration for most of the last decade. In 2019 alone, there were around 15,000 arrivals. more than those who left.
However, official statistics show that many people who leave the country are people with higher education.
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