FINLAND’s ageing population has created gaps in its workforce that Filipinos can fill, particularly in technology and healthcare, members of a Finnish delegation said.
“Finland, like most of the European countries, has this challenge that we are an ageing nation. We do not have enough kids coming to the labor market in the future,” Laura Lindeman, senior director and head of Work in Finland, told reporters late Thursday.
“But it is not only that we lack pairs of hands or we have gaps in the labor market, but it is also that international talent bring added value to Finnish companies because they can open connections, and diversity boosts innovation,” she added.
A Finnish delegation led by Finland’s Minister of Employment, Arto Olavi Satonen, visited the country between Jan. 16 and 18.
“We have more than 50 people from Finland. So it is a huge delegation that tells that Finland really sees the Philippines as a very interesting market,” she said.
According to Ms. Lindeman, the specific niches Filipinos can fill include information technology specialists, welders, nurses, caregivers, and restaurant and tourism employees.
By 2040, she said that Finland will need 1.37 million new workers, only part of which will be serviced by Finnish workers.
“On an annual basis, that is about 60,000, and some of that need is met with local labor. The gap is 20,000 per year. So that would be kind of the big picture estimate of the need for international workers,” she added.
The Finnish government is focusing on four countries for international recruitment — the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and Brazil.
Meanwhile, she said that the governments of the Philippines and Finland are discussing how to digitalize migration processes, which may help expedite the recruitment process for Finnish firms.
“We have already agreed on more detailed discussions on how Finland could actually help in digitalize the migration process here because we have learned that it is very time-consuming to work with papers in the process,” she said.
“In Finland, the migration process has been digitalized thoroughly. Almost everything is automated, so hopefully there could be some collaboration,” she added.
Work in Finland has nine private recruitment partners in the Philippines that interested workers can contact. These include IPAMS, Premier Global, Perpetual Help Placement Services, Staffhouse, and GROW, Inc.
During Mr. Satonen’s visit, the Department of Migrant Workers and Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment signed a declaration of intent to ensure Filipino worker safety and ethical deployment.
“That is the first step … I assume that usually the next step is that more negotiations will come out of that and that it might lead to a memorandum of understanding,” Ms. Lindeman said.
According to Mr. Satonen, there were 12,770 Filipino workers in Finland as of 2023 performing healthcare, technology, services, and industrial work. — Justine Irish D. Tabile
