Higher Education, Employment and Economic Contribution in Finland

The Starting Point of the Research

I carried out this research to understand how much truth there is in the claim I have heard for a long time that “Finland needs a skilled workforce.”

For a while, this claim seemed reasonable to me. I even considered starting an initiative to contribute to the issue. But as I examined the data, it became clear that the question was not simply whether Finland needs more university graduates.

What I really wanted to know was this: how many university graduates has Finland produced over the past five years? Why are they not considered enough? Is the country genuinely short of people with a university education or higher, or is there too little economic capacity and too few growing companies to employ the people already available?

According to the Statistics Finland data used in the Finland Higher Education Explorer dashboard, approximately 330,000 qualifications were recorded during 2021–2025, while about 434,000 new students entered higher education in the same period. Qualifications are awards, not unique people, but the scale is clear. There are also tens of thousands of qualification records in fields such as engineering (about 55,000) and information and communication technologies (about 29,000). This suggests that Finland is not dependent solely on graduates arriving from abroad to supply its educated workforce.

Of course, every developed country needs experienced people who specialise in highly specific fields or possess rare skills. Finland, the United States and Germany may all offer special opportunities and accelerated procedures for such people. This discussion is not about exceptional people with highly specialised expertise, who are rare to find.

The issue I am examining is whether importing university graduates from abroad is genuinely an economic necessity in general.

This question led me to another one: how strong is the economic structure that is supposed to employ the hundreds of thousands of educated people who have graduated in the past five years? How many companies in Finland can employ more than 80,000 engineering and ICT qualifications recorded in that period? Is the country’s company structure ready to grow on that scale?

Finland has many small and medium-sized businesses. A significant share serve local customers and prefer to remain profitable and stable at a particular size. Growth, selling abroad and employing many more people are not part of every company’s culture or strategy.

This approach has positive aspects: reliability, stability, high quality, moderation and sustainability. Its downside, however, is that it may not create enough growth to employ new graduates and other highly educated people.

When companies do not grow, some of the educated and employable population may need unemployment benefits for a long time. In this way, the private sector’s reluctance to grow can indirectly become an additional cost for the state. A vicious circle can emerge when the state educates highly qualified people but does not sufficiently encourage the economic growth that would employ them.

The central question of the research therefore became:

Does Finland really need university graduates from abroad, or does it need stronger, faster-growing and more export-oriented companies that can employ the educated people already in the country?

In this research, I try to assess higher-education graduates, the employment and tax contributions of Finnish company groups, the public sector and the country’s export capacity together. The findings do not, on their own, establish a definitive policy position. They do show that the claim “Finland generally needs university graduates” deserves closer and more detailed examination.

To explore the education side of the data yourself, by field, institution type, level and nationality background, open the Finland Higher Education Explorer. For a related argument, see Finland's Unemployment Paradox: A Mentality Problem, Not a Skills Gap.

1. Major Company Groups in Finland

The listed tax contributions total approximately €2.124 billion, excluding companies for which no Finland-specific figure was available. This is an indicative comparison, not a fully homogeneous tax dataset: some figures refer to corporate income tax, while others refer to a broader Finnish tax footprint. It should not be presented as the exact amount of tax these groups paid in Finland.

2. Employment in Finland, 2024

Finland has approximately 480,233 businesses. This figure includes sole traders, micro-businesses and group companies, so it should not be interpreted directly as the number of employers. The “Other private businesses and employers” category includes large companies not on our list, small and medium-sized businesses, freelancers and other private-sector employers.

3. Business Density and Possible Interpretation

When business counts are adjusted for population, Finland appears near the top among the countries included in this comparison, although it is behind Estonia, Portugal and the Netherlands. This result alone does not prove that Finland has a more entrepreneurial or productive company structure. Countries do not define “business” in the same way: some series count active businesses, some count registered legal units, and others also include sole traders.

The high business density in Portugal and the Netherlands may be partly explained by sole traders and freelancers being counted as businesses. In Estonia, companies established through e-residency, including small or low-activity companies, may increase the number of registered businesses. Therefore, the higher counts in these countries cannot automatically be interpreted as more employers or more employment.

A theoretical link can be proposed between tax rates and businesses invoicing one another instead of hiring employees, but the comparative table we have does not show that this is happening. To make such a claim, we would need to examine, for each country, the share of businesses without employees, the self-employment rate, the number of employer businesses, effective labour costs, and company growth and employment data together.

The safe conclusion from this table is therefore that business density in Finland is high, but the number of businesses is not a direct measure of employment capacity. Some of the high business counts may consist of sole traders and freelancers who do not employ anyone.

The figures are not perfectly harmonised: national sources use different concepts such as active enterprises, registered businesses and legal units. Finland’s figure excludes agriculture, forestry and fishing; Switzerland and Austria are approximate values pending a fully harmonised extraction from their national business-demography datasets. The ranking should therefore be read as a structural comparison, not as an exact league table of employers.

4. Finland’s Tax Revenues, 2024

The approximately €27 billion figure is the difference between €69.7 billion in central-government revenue and the figures for household income tax and corporate income tax. It represents VAT, fuel, alcohol, tobacco and energy taxes, as well as other central-government tax revenue; it is not a single official tax category. These items also come from different statistical scopes, so the table should be used as an indicative summary.

The standard corporate income tax rate in Finland is 20%. The actual effective rate varies according to a company’s profits, losses, tax deductions, group structure and international activities.

The most important result is this: Finland’s public revenue does not rely only on corporate income tax from large companies. Income taxes paid by employees, social security contributions, VAT and consumption taxes form a much broader revenue base.

5. Finland’s Exports, 2024

Export figures show Finland’s capacity to earn income from abroad. However, not all the companies in our list of 16 are exporters. Around ten of them mainly serve the domestic Finnish or Nordic market. A more significant contribution to export capacity comes from globally active groups such as Nokia, UPM, Metsä Group, Valmet, KONE, Konecranes and, in part, Fortum.

It would therefore be wrong to treat the combined turnover of these 16 companies as Finland’s exports. Most of the companies on the list contribute through domestic employment and tax revenue, while a smaller group contributes to Finland’s capacity to earn income from abroad. Nor do all exports represent profits taxed directly in Finland. The companies’ activities abroad, imported inputs, intra-group transfers, profit distributions and the country in which tax arises must also be examined.

For this reason, market value or total turnover alone is not enough to evaluate companies. More meaningful indicators for Finland are:

1. How many people they employ in Finland,
2. How much tax and tax-related contribution they generate in Finland,
3. How much income they bring into Finland from abroad,
4. Whether this economic activity creates new and sustainable employment.

Methodology and Limitations

• Company employee counts may refer to the group, Finnish legal entities or estimated Finnish employees. The symbols ≈, + and N/D indicate this uncertainty.
• The companies’ tax figures were not prepared using the same methodology. Corporate income tax and broader tax-footprint figures should be kept separate.
• Global company sales are not the same as exports from Finland. Sales by foreign subsidiaries should not be counted as Finnish exports.
• Education figures come from the Finland Higher Education Explorer. Qualifications are awards recorded in a year, not unique people, and student counts from different years must not be added together.
• This research examines the relationship between the supply of educated labour and employment and export capacity. On its own, it does not prove that Finland has no labour shortage in any particular occupation or sector.

Overall Conclusion

The central issue this research raises is not whether educated people are available in Finland, but how strong the company structure is at turning this human capital into economic value and sustainable employment.

Finland has produced a very large number of higher-education qualifications over the past five years (see the Finland Higher Education Explorer for the breakdown). For this reason, the claim that “the country does not produce enough university graduates” does not appear convincing on the available data alone. Finland may need experienced people with rare and highly specialised expertise in particular sectors, but that does not mean it must generally bring in university graduates from abroad in every field.

The tax and employment data point to a different picture. A significant share of the organisations making the largest tax and employment contributions in Finland are in the public sector or are large groups focused on the Finnish domestic market. By contrast, a large part of the business base consists of micro-businesses, sole traders and small employers. These businesses are not all insignificant, but many primarily focus on sustaining their own operations and providing an income for their owners. Therefore, even a high number of businesses does not automatically mean high-scale employment, exports or corporate-tax capacity.

This structure may help explain why much of Finland’s tax burden is carried through employee income taxes, social contributions and consumption taxes. It cannot be said that all companies bring large amounts of foreign income or corporate tax into the country. In particular, businesses that serve local customers and employ very few people contribute mainly through local services and limited employment.

The issue is therefore not simply to “establish more companies” or “bring in more foreign graduates.” Finland’s primary need is an economic framework that makes it easier for small companies with export potential to grow, makes hiring new employees less costly, and encourages large companies to increase their employment, research and development, and export contributions in Finland.

Unless this framework is established, Finland may face two opposing realities at the same time: a high-quality education system that produces many graduates, and insufficient growth and export capacity to employ them. The debate is incomplete if it focuses only on migration or labour supply. Education policy, companies’ growth capacity, export strategy, tax structure and employment incentives need to be considered together.

Sources

• Finland Higher Education Explorer (programme records and 2021–2025 student statistics)
• Statistics Finland – Employment
• Statistics Finland – 2024 tax revenue and national accounts
• Finnish Tax Administration – Corporate income tax
• Statistics Finland – Enterprise financial statements
• Finnish Entrepreneurs – Entrepreneurship in Finland
• Finnish Government / Finnish Customs – Goods exports 2024
• Statistics Finland – International trade in goods and services

TLDR

In short, Finland has millions of well-educated, skilled and hardworking people, thanks to its excellent education system. But it does not seem to have enough ambitious institutions capable of employing all these people.

From the largest companies to the biggest taxpayers and employers, many of the country’s strongest institutions earn most of their money from the domestic market. The Finnish people keep these companies alive. They carry almost the entire tax burden that supports the state and the social system. They receive an education, work hard and do their part.

The Finnish people are strong, selfless and hardworking. But when it comes to meeting the needs of the people and the country, the institutions do not appear to be as selfless or as determined as the people themselves.

The state also seems not to have taken sufficiently effective steps to push these institutions to do more. Finland has an exceptionally well-educated population, but it needs companies that are willing to grow, hire, export and bring money into the country.

Because this house will not become richer unless money comes in from outside.