A job has restored Maarit Samateh’s confidence and energy

After about a year without work, 56-year-old Maarit Samateh has found paid employment as a classroom assistant and after-school club instructor in Lappeenranta. The job has helped restore her confidence and energy, she told Yle.

“I didn’t have professional self-confidence,” Samateh said. Her children have also noticed a change, telling her she is “happier and more energetic”.

Samateh had never held a permanent job and had worked in temporary positions, including as a classroom assistant on contracts that ended during the summer holidays. Her current job came through a programme organised by the City of Lappeenranta, LAB University of Applied Sciences and Saimaa Vocational College. It gives long-term unemployed people a workplace while allowing them to attend employment-support training and meetings during working hours.

Samateh, who is a caregiver for her child with an intellectual disability, said the training helped her recognise how skills developed through caregiving could be useful at work and how to explain them to employers. She has used Lappeenranta’s employment services before, but said the support had changed. In the past, she said, people sat through lectures about things they already knew.

Long-term unemployment has been rising across Finland, but fell in South Karelia in September. The number of people who had been unemployed for at least a year dropped by 6 per cent in the region, while it increased by 9 per cent nationwide.

“Something is being done right in South Karelia now,” said Edla Inkilä, an expert at the regional vitality centre. Tiia Piikki, service area manager for the South Karelia employment area, said reducing long-term unemployment was one of its goals for the year, but that there was no single explanation for the decline.

Employment services were transferred from the state to municipalities at the start of 2025, with each municipality becoming responsible for financing unemployment benefits. Piikki said municipalities in South Karelia had stepped up their efforts to organise services since the change. In her view, the main obstacle to employment is whether suitable jobs are available, rather than a lack of services.

Santtu Sundvall, a unit director at the Employment, Development and Administration Centre, said the current funding model for unemployment benefits may discourage municipalities from directing unemployed people to employment services. Use of rehabilitative work activities and subsidised employment has fallen since the transfer, he said.

The share of unemployed people taking part in employment services has dropped from 30 per cent to 17 per cent since the reform. Sundvall said legislative changes and the funding model may have contributed to the decline. In some cases, he said, it may be cheaper for a municipality to offer no services if their employment outcomes are uncertain. Municipalities must pay increasing penalties to the state for unemployed people who have not found work in the open labour market after 100 days.

Alongside her job, Samateh meets other people taking part in the training once a month. She hopes to keep in touch with them.