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Most workers of foreign origin earn less than their Finnish counterparts — with two exceptions | Yle News
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Most workers of foreign origin earn less than their Finnish counterparts — with two exceptions | Yle News

Overall, the hourly wages of foreign-born workers remain around 15 percent lower than their Finnish counterparts.

Hands glowing and typing on a laptop.

The median hourly wage for workers of foreign origin was 16.75 euros, while their Finnish counterparts earned 19.61 euros per hour, according to Statistics Finland. Image: Henrietta Hassinen / Yle

In Finland, workers of foreign origin generally earn less than their Finnish counterparts, but this is not the case for specialists, according to Statistics Finland.

The salaries of managers of foreign origin already exceeded those of Finns, according to the agency’s senior actuaries, Hanna Jokimäki And Johanna Arvonenwho published a article on the subject (in Finnish) Monday.

Overall, the hourly wages of foreign-born workers remain around 15 percent lower than their Finnish counterparts.

According to the calculation agency, the median hourly wage of workers of foreign origin was 16.75 euros, while that of their Finnish counterparts earned 19.61 euros per hour.

Jokimäki and Arvonen noted that people of foreign origin are also more often employed in lower-paid jobs than people of Finnish origin.

They explained that when we talk about people of foreign origin, we mean people whose parents – or the only known parent – ​​were born outside Finland. At the same time, people of Finnish origin have at least one parent born in the Nordic country.

Their article noted that recently there have been many discussions in Finland about the need for foreign workers keep the country’s social security system afloat. However, he also points out that people of foreign origin also have more difficulty finding employment than their Finnish counterparts.

According to the results of a survey by the Finnish Chamber of Commerce, around 37 percent of the country’s companies have recruited international employees over the past five years.

At the same time, 54 percent of companies surveyed said they employed at least one employee of foreign origin.

The Chamber said the experiences of companies that recruited staff from overseas were very positive.

He noted, however, that the number of international recruitments was slightly lower than a year ago, due to Finland’s economic situation and an overall decrease in recruitment.

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