In this blog, we return to the issue of foreign employment in Finland and find out what are the most common jobs for foreigners in Finland today.
With ‘foreigners’, I refer to the population Statistics Finland calls individuals with a foreign background (ulkomaalaistaustainen). They are persons whose parents or only known parent was born outside Finland. They themselves, however, might have been born here. Therefore, I understand that the word “foreigner” is not a satisfactory term to describe these people, but I use it here for brevity. I use the word ‘Finns’ to describe individuals who have at least one locally-born parent.
In a 2020 blog post, we discussed the issue of the most common jobs for foreigners in Finland briefly. We talked about it since we wanted to look at salary levels in these jobs. In defining the most common jobs at the time, we used Hanna Sutela’s publication from 2015 and another Statistics Finland publication from 2018. This latter publication was based on data from 2016.
In 2016, the 10 most common professions for individuals with a foreign background were office cleaners, builders, salespeople, cooks, healthcare workers, waiters, warehouse workers, shift managers and managers in the restaurant industry, bus and tram drivers, and assistants in commercial kitchens.
Recently, Hanna Sutela from Statistics Finland compared the current situation to 2016. She wanted to find out what are the most common jobs for foreigners in Finland today, how their distribution to different jobs may differ from the general population, and whether the situation has changed since 2016. We’ll summarize her findings here.
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The most common industries for foreigners and Finns
The most common industries employing Finns are healthcare and social services, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail. Of all employed Finns, 16.3 % are employed in healthcare and social services, 13.5 % in manufacturing, and 10.4 % in wholesale and retail. The same three industries were also important employers for foreigners. For them, the percentages were about 14%, 11 %, and 8 % respectively.
In addition to these three, Sutela informs us that other important industries employing foreigners include administrative and support service activities, information and communication, accommodation and food service activities, and education. Each of these employs about 10 % of the foreign population in Finland.
Information and communication, which includes IT jobs, has rapidly become one of the most important industries employing foreigners in Finland. In 2016, about 4 % of employed foreigners were employed in information and communication. By 2023, this percentage had risen to 9 %. In contrast, only about 5 % of Finns are employed in this industry.
Foreigner’s share of employees in selected industries
About 9 % of all employees in Finland are foreign-born, foreigners in this blog post. Their share of employees in any given industry, however, varies significantly. Foreigners are particularly often employed in accommodation and food service activities. Their share of all employees in that industry is about 25 %. The share of foreign employees is also high in the administrative and support service activities where their share is about 17 %. This industry includes cleaning and maintenance services.
Although the healthcare and social services and manufacturing industries are important employers for foreign employees, their share of all workers is less than 10 % in both. This is because these industries also employ significant numbers of Finns.
Foreigner’s share of all employees in the information and communication industry has risen notably from 2016 to 2023. In 2016, 7 % of all employees in this industry were foreigners. In 2023, their share was about 15 %.
The most common jobs for foreigners in Finland
There are some differences between Finns and foreigners in terms of what kind of jobs they do in the Finnish labor market.
Foreigners, for example, do not work as often as Finns as professionals (11 % and 20 %, respectively) or clerical support workers (3 % and 5 %, respectively). In contrast, foreigners work as service and sales workers more often than Finns (22 % vs. 18 %). They also work more often in elementary occupations than Finns (14 % vs. 5 %). This last group includes, for example, cleaners and food preparation assistants.
For both Finns and foreigners, the most common job was that of a manager. 28 % of both Finns and foreigners worked in jobs that fall under this category.
Sutela notes, however, that the current situation differs significantly from 2016. More and more foreigners work in professions requiring higher education and fewer are working in more traditional blue-collar jobs. The trend is similar for Finnish workers, but the rate of change is more notable for foreign employees.
A closer look
A larger share of foreign managers are working in IT and information technology jobs than Finnish managers. The same can be said for natural science and technology jobs. In education, business management, legal professions, social services, and culture, the situation is reversed. A smaller share of foreign managers are working in these fields than Finnish managers.
The share of foreigners working as doctors in the healthcare sector is approximately the same as the share of Finnish employees. However, a larger proportion of foreign employees are working in restaurant (such as waiters), cleaning, healthcare (nurse’s assistants), and construction jobs than Finnish employees.
Some of these differences are visible also when separating employees by gender. For example, healthcare jobs are the most common jobs for foreign and Finnish women. However, for foreign women, the second most common jobs are cleaning jobs whereas for Finns they are jobs in education. Interestingly, for men, the most notable difference is the rank of IT and information technology jobs. For foreign men, these jobs are at the top of the list. For Finnish men, in contrast, these jobs are 5th on the list (see Table 1 in Sutela’s article).
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