Finland seeks to recruit immigrants amid aging population

Unlike what is repeatedly referred to as The happiest country on the planet with unparalleled standards of living Finland can be crowded with people wanting to relocate, but the truth is not because It is facing an acute shortage of labor in various productive sectors.

This situation prompts the authorities to seek to fill in the remaining voids by making constant calls not only to its residents, but also beyond the borders of the European state.

It is now widely recognized We need an amazing number of people عدد “To come to the country,” said recruit Sako Tehverayenen of Talented Solutions.

He explained that workers were needed “to help cover the costs of the aging generation”. dusty.

While many Western countries struggle with poor population growth, few feel the effects as strongly as Finland.

What made Finland demand immigrants?

With 39.2 over 65 for every 100 people of working age, it ranks second only to Japan in how aging the population is, according to the United Nations, which predicts that by 2030 the “old-age dependency ratio” will rise to 47.5.

The government has warned that the nation of 5.5 million people Practically needs to double immigration levels to 20,000 or 30,000 annually to maintain public services and cover impending pension shortfalls.

Finland looks like an attractive destination on paper, scoring highly in international comparisons for quality of life, freedom and gender equality, with little to no corruption, crime and pollution.

However, the Anti-immigrant sentiment Reluctance to hire foreigners is also widespread in Western Europe’s more homogeneous society, and the far-right opposition Finnish party regularly enjoys significant support during elections.

The goal is to make Finland attractive

Charles Matisse, a researcher at the Academy of Finland, said that after years of stagnation, business and government are “now at a tipping point and are aware of the problem” posed by an aging population.

Matisse is one of the experts consulted by the government’s “Impulso Al Talento” program (in Spanish), now in its fourth year, which aims to: Make the country more attractive internationallypartly through local employment schemes.

The target audience includes healthcare workers from Spain, metal workers from Slovakia, and marine and information technology (IT) experts from Russia, India and Southeast Asia. But those efforts have been exhausted.

climate, economy and culture; Conflicts faced by immigrants in Finland

In 2013, five of the eight Spanish nurses recruited left the western city of Vaasa after a few months, Quoting exorbitant prices from FinlandCold weather and well-known complex language.

However, Finland has experienced net migration for most of the past decade, with about 15,000 more people arriving than leaving in 2019.

Official statistics show that many of those leaving the country are highly educated people.

Facing the largest shortage of skilled labor in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)OECD), some Finnish startups are creating a joint job site for foreign talent.

“As you can imagine, this is slow,” Sean Rhoden of Walt Food Delivery said in an email, adding, “We try to make the transportation process as smooth as possible.”

Foreigners’ experience in Finland

The capital’s mayor, Jan Fabávory, said the start-ups “told me that they could make anyone in the world come to work for them in Helsinki, as long as they were single”.

But “their husbands still had big problems getting a decent job.”

Many foreigners complain about a General reluctance to acknowledge experience or qualifications abroad, as well as bias against non-Finnish applicants.

Ahmed, one of them, asked to change his name for professional reasons. He is 42 years old Briton with many years of experience creating digital products for famous multinational companies.

However, the six months of networking and applying for a job in Helsinki, where she was trying to move for family reasons, proved unsuccessful.

He said “Even the recruit refused to shake my handThis was a special event.”

“There has never been a shortage of jobs, Just a lack of mentalityHe said Ahmed, who during his research in Finland received offers from major companies in Norway, Qatar, the United Kingdom and Germany, and finally began to travel weekly from Helsinki to Dusseldorf.

Recruitment officer Sako Tihverayinen said the shortage was prompting more companies to loosen their insistence on hiring only indigenous Finnish workers.

“And so far many Finnish companies and organizations They are inflexible about the use of the Finnish languageThey also dominate it fluently.”

Does being “the happiest country in the world” serve economic stability?

For the mayor of Helsinki, Jan Favuri, four years of Finland as the happiest country in the world in the UN ranking “did not help as much as we had hoped.”

“If you stop someone on the street in Paris, London, Rome or New York, I still don’t think most people know about us“Meditation.

Mayor Vapavuri, whose four-year term expires this summer, has increasingly turned to international PR firms to help raise the city’s profile.

He is optimistic about Finland’s ability to attract talent from Asia in the future, and believes that people’s priorities will change once international mobility returns again after the coronavirus.

He said Helsinki’s strengths, being “safe, practical, reliable and predictable, these values ​​have gained importance,” adding: “In fact, I think our situation after the pandemic is better than before.”

Umzi