Pirkanmaa accounts for nearly a third of Finland’s rise in unemployment

Pirkanmaa accounted for nearly a third of the increase in unemployed jobseekers across Finland over the past year, Yle reports. The region has also seen the country’s fastest growth in overall unemployment and long-term unemployment.

At the end of August, Pirkanmaa had nearly 3,600 more long-term unemployed people than a year earlier, an increase of almost 31%, according to employment statistics from the Keha Centre. Long-term unemployment rose by less than 17% in Kainuu, the next-fastest-growing region.

The number of unemployed jobseekers in Pirkanmaa was 18% higher than a year earlier. In Uusimaa, which has more than a million additional residents, the increase was 4%.

Juha Salminen, a forecasting specialist at the Inner Finland Regional Vitality Centre, said the region’s increase was unusually large. He and Regina Saari, Tampere’s director of growth and employment, identified three contributing factors: people moving to the area while unemployed, a shortage of jobs and cuts to employment services.

Tampere continues to attract working-age residents, including people who have been unemployed for a long time. Salminen said some move to the region because they believe they will have better chances of accessing education and employment, but there are not enough companies able to hire them immediately.

In 2024, 288 more unemployed people moved to Tampere than left the city. Only Vantaa and Helsinki had a slightly higher net inflow among Finland’s large cities. Figures are not yet available for unemployed people who moved to Pirkanmaa in 2025 and 2026.

There are just over 46,000 jobseekers in the Tampere region’s employment area, while public employment services list only a few thousand vacancies each month. Saari said the low number of vacancies and intense competition had pushed more people into long-term unemployment.

Saari said the biggest reason for the rise in long-term unemployment was the decline in services designed to support people into work. When people leave those services, they are recorded as unemployed jobseekers. Changes to legislation have reduced such services in recent years, and municipal wage-subsidy employment has practically ended since the employment services reform.

Salminen estimated that it could take another year to a year and a half for the situation to turn around.