The report - the eleventh in a series of country reports -is part of the OECD’s project with the European Commission. It aims to raise the quality of the data collected and their use in evaluating the effectiveness of ALMPs. 

It shows that over the past decade, Finland’s labour market has been characterised by high participation and employment rates (79.3 percent and 73.8 percent, respectively, in 2022) in comparison with other OECD countries and a relatively more robust recovery in employment and participation after the Covid-19 pandemic, 

while unemployment is relatively high compared to other OECD countries.

According to the report, less than half of jobseekers in Finland contact the public employment service to search for work (44 per cent in 2020), showing a need to strengthen labour market ties for those marginally attached.

Data shows that Finland spends almost twice as much on ALMP as the OECD average, allocating resources to training job seekers, addressing labour shortages, and supporting labour market transitions.

The report assesses the impact of the two main training programmes available to jobseekers: labour market training (LMT) and self-motivated activity with unemployment benefits (SMT).

LMT exhibits positive long-term effects on employment that align with national and international evidence and affects the distribution of occupational quality. Therefore, policymakers should design programmes that improve the quality of jobs on average or programmes that reduce inequalities in job quality, leading to a more concentrated distribution of occupational quality.

SMT presents positive long-term effects on employment, but results vary across population subgroups and benefit more women and older individuals. Therefore, efforts could be made to encourage the groups of the population that are more likely to benefit from it to increase their participation in SMT.

Finally, the report makes recommendations for improving the effectiveness of Finland’s ALMPs and strengthening the capacity of the Finnish authorities in conducting ALMP impact evaluations, suggesting enhancing the role of the Ministry of Economy and Employment to promote a long-term strategy on research and allocate more resources to research activities and improve the coverage, quality, and availability of data for analysis and research on ALMPs.

This could be reached by increasing funding for Finnish statistics to support research activities and strengthening data exchange between administrative registers to support labour advisers, job seekers, and employers and to ensure data accuracy.

Finally, there is a need to improve the targeting and effectiveness of SMT and LMT, redesigning them to improve the labour market outcomes of groups that still need to experience the beneficial effects of these measures and using them to promote labour mobility and reduce labour market shortages.