Pirkanmaa absorbs nearly one-third of Finland’s rise in new unemployed jobseekers

YLE says that by the end of August Pirkanmaa accounted for almost a third of Finland’s year-on-year rise in new unemployed jobseekers.

Long-term unemployment in Pirkanmaa has jumped sharply. Job-placement statistics show about 3,600 more long-term unemployed than a year earlier, roughly a 31 percent rise and the largest increase in the country.

Juha Salminen, a forecaster at the Regional Vitality Centre for Central Finland, calls the trend exceptional and worrying. He says many working-age people move to Pirkanmaa hoping for better training and work opportunities but find too few immediate openings.

Local officials say Tampere’s growth masks structural challenges. Regina Saari, head of the Tampere region’s growth and employment area, points to cuts in services that help people into work, including the scaling back of rehabilitative work activity after responsibility moved to wellbeing services counties and the TE reform that ended many municipal wage-subsidy hirings.

The region now has roughly 46,000 jobseekers, while only a few thousand vacancies appear each month. About half of the long-term unemployed have been out of work more than two years, so recovery could take a year or more.