This week in our blog our topic is management salaries in Finland.
Previously, we have published several blogs about salaries in Finland. We have collected those blogs here into our ultimate guide for salaries in Finland for your convenience. We haven’t thus far, however, talked about management salaries in Finland.
As is usual for our salary-related blogs, this blog is based on information from Statistics Finland. Their databases are the most comprehensive source for salary information in Finland. You can use their open data also to help you narrow down your salary request when necessary. We have published a free video course that tells you how you can do that.
Managers and the Statistics Finland salary databases
In this particular case, Statistics Finland collects salary data separately for the private sector, the government, and the municipal sectors.
It’s good to note here that the private sector in their definition includes not only regular companies but also companies that are partly owned by the government or municipalities. Also, it includes foundations, NGOs, and entrepreneurs.
According to the definition of Statistics Finland, managers make decisions and are responsible for their organizations or organizational units. They make large-scale decisions about strategy, operational direction, budget, personnel, and other matters. The difference between supervisors classified under other occupational groups and managers classified as their own group is that managers have the overall responsibility for the whole organization or organizational unit whereas supervisors don’t.
Before we move on to discussing management salaries in Finland, we give you some general figures relating to this group of workers.
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Managers in Finland – some numbers
In the database, managers are classified based on their occupational field. There are four larger groups. These are
- chief executives, senior officials, and legislators;
- administrative and commercial managers;
- production and specialized services managers; and
- hospitality, retail, and other services managers.
The database includes salary data from 54 240 full-time managers working for employers that have five or more employees. 44 903 of them work in the private sector. The government sector employs 1 900 of them. The municipal sector, in turn, employs 7 437 managers.
Overall, 34 866 (64.2 %) of the full-time managers are men and 19 374 (35.7 %) are women.
In the private sector, about 70 % are men and 30 % are women.
This share flips for the municipal sector. There, about 34 % of managers are men and about 66 % are women.
Elsewhere (for example in this blog post), we have discussed the gender segregation of the Finnish labor market and how, for example, the municipal sector is very heavily dominated by women. It is reflected also in management.
In the government sector, there are about 50 % each.
In Finland, there are 5 386 chief executives, senior officials, and legislators. Of them, about 64 % are men.
There are, in turn, 21 992 administrative and commercial managers. They include business services and administration managers as well as sales, marketing, and development managers. Of them, about 67 % are men and 33 % are women.
A very similar gender division exists among production and specialized services managers. There are altogether 24 113 of them. And about 62 % are men and 38 % are women. This group includes, for example, manufacturing, mining, construction, and distribution managers; and information and communications technology services managers.
Among hospitality, retail, and other services managers, about 70 % are men and 30 % women. There are 2 749 of these managers altogether.
Now, let’s look at their salaries.
Management salaries in Finland
The salary figures we discuss include salaries for the regular working hours but also overtime and extra time pay and any additional pay that they receive regularly. These salary figures do not include one-time bonuses.
The salary figures are pre-tax figures.
General information about management salaries in Finland
Statistics Finland informs us that the median for management salaries in Finland is 7 200 € per month in the private sector. This is for all four groups of managers combined.
The mean monthly salary in the government sector is 6 995 €/month and 5 176 € in the municipal sector.
The dispersion of manager’s salaries is largest in the private sector. There, the highest salaries were 2.8 times more than the lowest salaries. In the government sector, this pay difference was 1.8 while in the municipal sector it was 2.3.
According to Statistics Finland, the total earnings of managers were the higher the larger the company in which the manager is working.
The mean monthly salary for managers in companies with less than 100 employees was 9 500 € per month. The mean salary for managers in companies with more than 250 employees, in turn, was 13 871 €/month.
The data Statistics Finland provides openly also allows us to look at the earnings of the four different groups of managers more closely. Next, we’ll look at these management salaries in Finland separately.
Salaries of chief executives, senior officials, and legislators
In Finland, the median monthly salary of chief executives, senior officials, and legislators, in general, is 8 083 €. The average is 9 829 € per month.
Earners at the top thus haul the average up. This is clear when we look at the earnings of the top and bottom 10 % of earners. The monthly salary above which we find the highest 10 % of earners is 16 399 €/month overall. The lowest 10 % of earners earn less than 4 062 €/month. The top earners thus earn 4 times more than the lowest earners.
Looking at the salaries by sector and by gender, we see quite a lot of variation.
Variation by sector
For those working in the private sector, the median salary is 8 874 €/month. Their average, in turn, is 10 776 €/month.
There, the top 10 % of earners earn more than 18 739 €/month. The bottom 10 %, in turn, earn less than 3 724 €. Thus the top earners earn about 5 times more than the low earners. The gap is thus wider in the private sector than it was overall. Note, however, that the private sector here also includes NGOs which have lower salaries than companies.
The median salary of those in the municipal sector (7 443 €) is clearly less than in the private sector. It is, however, higher than in the government sector (7 029€/month).
The same is true for average salaries. The average salary of chief executives, senior officials, and legislators in the municipal sector is 7 970 €/month and 7 349 € in the government sector. Thus clearly less than the average salary for this position in the private sector.
In the municipal sector, the top earners earn about 2 times more than the lowest earners. The difference is quite similar in the government sector. There, they earn about 1.9 times more. In both cases, a clear difference to the private sector.
Variation by gender
The salaries of women chief executives, senior officials, and legislators are less than men’s in every sector. For example, their mean monthly salary overall is 6 336 €/month compared to men’s 9 229 €/month.
For men, the highest 10 % starts at 18 684 €/month. Their lowest earners are below 5 139 €/month. For women, the highest 10 % starts at 11 140 €/month. The lowest women earners, in turn, are below 3 463 €/month.
In the private sector, the mean monthly salary of men executives, senior officials, and legislators is 10 251 €. For women, it is 5 485 €. The averages are 12 320 €/month and 7 245 €/month, respectively.
When looking especially at the top earners the differences between men’s and women’s earnings are clear. For men chief executives, senior officials, and legislators in the private sector, the top 10 % of earners start at 20 455 €/month. Women’s top 10 % start at 12 957 €/month.
With openly available data it is impossible to tell to what extent this reflects differences in industries in which men and women are employed. Nevertheless, the differences are notable.
In the public sector, the differences between women’s and men’s salaries are not as big.
For example in the government sector, the median monthly salary of men chief executives, senior officials, and legislators is 7 448 €/month. For women, it is 6 746 €/month.
Salaries of administrative and commercial managers
Among administrative and commercial managers differences in salaries be they between sectors, genders, or top and lowest earners are not as pronounced as with chief executives, senior officials, and legislators. In fact, in this group women outearn men in the government sector at least when measured in means and averages.
The median monthly salary of administrative and commercial managers, in general, is 7 189 €. For men, it’s 7 401 € and for women 6 807 €.
Overall, the top 10 % of earners earn more than 10 946 €/month. This same figure for men is 11 237 € and for women 10 200 €.
Thus, differences do exist but are much less pronounced than with chief executives, senior officials, and legislators. The same is true even for the private sector. There, men administrative and commercial managers earn on average 7 954 €/month. Their median is 7 439 €/month. For women, the same figures are 7 249 € and 6 843 €, respectively.
In the government sector, the median for men is 7 129 €/month while for women it is 7 229 €. Also, the average is higher for women (7 265 €) than it is for men (7 181 €) in the government sector.
Salaries of production and specialized services managers
Among this group, the mean monthly salary is 6 361 €. The average is 6 981 €.
Again, men production and specialized services managers earn more than women. The mean monthly salary of men production and specialized services managers is 7 200 €. For women, it is 4 828 €. The averages are 7 927 € and 5 462 €, respectively.
In the private sector, the mean monthly salary is 7 072 € overall. For men, the mean salary is again higher than this (7 520 €) while for women it is notably lower (5 589 €).
The same is true for averages. The average monthly salary of men production and specialized services managers in the private sector is 8 240 €. Women’s is 6 163 €/month.
In this group, however, the difference between the highest and lowest earners is not as big as it is for chief executives, senior officials, and legislators even in the private sector. In this group, the highest earners earn about 2.8 more than the lowest earners in the private sector.
Among chief executives, senior officials, and legislators working in the private sector, earning 18 739 €/month got you into the top 10 % of earners in this group. Among production and specialized services managers in the private sector, 11 426 €/month gets you into the top 10 %.
In this group, salaries in the municipal sector are notably lower than in the private sector. The mean monthly salary for production and specialized services managers working in the municipal sector is 4 825 €. As we mentioned above, is 7 072 € in the private sector.
Production and specialized services managers in the government sector, however, fare better compared to the private sector than those in the municipal sector. Their mean is 6 575 €.
Salaries of hospitality, retail, and other services managers in Finland
For these managers, the median monthly salary is 6 193 €, which is the lowest among mean management salaries in Finland.
Again for men, the mean is notably higher (6 690 €) than this. For women, it’s lower (5 213 €).
Although the overall mean is lower than for the other three management groups, managers in hospitality, retail, and other services need to earn quite a lot to make it into the top 10 % of earners. Overall, they need to earn 11 788 €/month to make it into the top 10 %. Men in this group need to earn 12 064 € and women 10 262 € per month. In each case, this is more than for administrative and commercial managers, and for production and specialized services managers.
This group doesn’t include government sector managers at all due to the nature of the industry they are in.
The salary differences between the private sector and the municipal sector are quite pronounced especially in the top earner category. There, managers in the private sector need to make at least 12 020 € to be among the top 10 %. In the municipal sector, 6 682 € suffices.
The mean salary for women hospitality, retail, and other services managers in the municipal sector (4 675 €) is lower than it is for men (4 874 €). They do, however, need to make more (6 859 €) than men (6 196 €) to make it into the top 10 % among their peers.
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