Although a larger share of foreign graduates found jobs in Finland during the recent years, the quality of their employment has not improved significantly, said the Finnish National Agency for Education on Tuesday referring statistics on Tuesday.
According to the Statistics, foreigners are less likely to work in expert tasks than Finnish graduates.
In 2023, 63% of foreigner employed in Finland worked in expert positions, whereas this figure for Finns was 77%.
A larger share of foreigners than Finns have jobs in the cleaning industry or work in assisting tasks in the restaurant sector (9% of foreign nationals in 2020 and 6% in 2023, 1% of Finns in both years).
In 2023, as many as 14% of foreigners and 8% of Finns were placed in the category 'unknown' in Statistics Finland's classification. This means that there is no information on their employment situation, or their tasks cannot be placed in existing classifications.
Citizens of European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) countries leave Finland more often than other foreign citizens after graduating.
However, those EU and EEA citizens who stay in Finland are more likely to find employment in expert positions than other nationalities.
According to the statistics, steadily increasing numbers of foreign graduates from Finnish higher education institutions have found jobs in Finland in recent years.
In 2023, more than a half of foreign citizens who had completed a degree in Finland had found a job three years after graduation.
Employment rates following graduation have developed differently for foreigners and Finns in recent years.
In 2018, the employment rate of foreigners in Finland was 42%, whereas in 2023, 53% had found jobs in this country.
The employment rate of Finnish graduates remained fairly stable at 87% to 88% in 2018–2023, with the exception of a small drop in 2020 (85%).
While the general job market situation affects foreigners' employment, there are also other background factors.
“Higher education institutions have focused on foreign students' employment and services that support it. Foreign graduates' employment has also been talked about a lot recently,” said Irma Garam, Senior Specialist at the Foresight and Analysis unit of the Finnish National Agency for Education.
“The higher education institutions' experience is that foreign students face more challenges than Finnish students in finding places for internships included in their studies,” said Maija Airas, Counsellor of Education, Head of the International Higher Education Cooperation unit of the Finnish National Agency for Education.
Airas said recent comparative data indicate that foreign students are also less likely to work during their studies than their Finnish peers. These factors may partly explain the differences in employment after graduation.
The report produced by Studyportals, an international expert organisation of student recruitment, for the Finnish National Agency for Education complements statistical data on foreign students' employment.
The dataset comprises the data of about 1,700 students obtained from the Studyportals database and social media.
The report compares the placement of international degree students in the Finnish labour market one year after their graduation.
The data indicate that around one half of foreign degree students stay in Finland, and almost all of them are employed one year after graduation.
According to Studyportals, the fields with best employment opportunities are education, industrial manufacturing and the IT sector.
In the case of the education sector, this may be explained by the fact that students pursue postgraduate studies.
The jobs in industrial manufacturing and the software sector support statistical data suggesting that students in the fields of technology and IT are likely to be employed.
“In other words, the employment situation in the technology and IT sector is good. This is excellent, as a majority of foreign-language degree students study in these fields,” said Harri Lähdekorpi, Expert of International Marketing at the Internationalisation Services of the Finnish National Agency for Education.
Of different nationalities, citizens of India are the most likely to stay in Finland after graduation.
German and Spanish students, for example, who do not stay in Finland after graduation are a good reflection of European mobility.
International experts tend to head for Germany and the United States, in particular. The latter is also a popular destination for others who have completed a degree in Finland, not only those who originally arrived from the United States.
This information is based on Statistics Finland's dataset, in which statistics on higher education graduates and employment situation are combined. The dataset focuses on the situation of foreign citizens who have completed a higher education degree in Finland three years after graduation. The most recent data are from 2023. In this dataset, a foreign student refers to persons who do not have Finnish citizenship. This group may also include foreign citizens who have lived in Finland for a longer while.
- Foreigners
- Less
- Expert jobs
- Finland
Source: www.dailyfinland.fi
