January 25, Helsinki According to Statistics Finland, Finland’s unemployment rate increased in 2024 as employment declined.

The statistics office reports that there were 2,602,000 employed individuals between the ages of 15 and 74 on average, while 238,000 were jobless. According to the Xinhua news agency, there were 34,000 more jobless persons and 25,000 fewer employed people than the year before.

The employment rate for those aged 20 to 64 was 76.7% last year, a 1.2% decrease from 2023.

But at the same time, Finland’s unemployment rate rose from the year before. In 2024, the unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 74 was 8.4%, up 1.2% from the previous year.

Henna Busk, senior economist at Pellervo Economic Research PTT, commented on the most recent employment statistics published by Statistics Finland, saying, “Unemployment remains at a high level, and there are still no signs of a turnaround in the labor market.”

“It is concerning that employment in professional, scientific, and technical activities fell the most in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, indicating a weak employment trend among highly educated people,” Busk stated in a news statement released by PTT on Friday.

Additionally, the number of long-term jobless individuals is increasing. “The larger the group of long-term unemployed, the harder it is to reduce unemployment,” Busk said.