Back to Work: Finland: Improving the Re-employment Prospects of Displaced Workers

Foreword

OECD labour markets are dynamic. Each year, around 2o% of jobs in a typical OECD country are created or destroyed, and around one third of all workers are hired or separate from their employer. These large job and worker flows are driven by a continuous process of labour reallocation, both across industries and between declining and growing firms within the same industry. This process is an important source of productivity gains, since more productive firms expand at the expense of less productive firms and earnings rise on average for workers changing jobs, particularly workers who voluntarily quit one job in order to move to another. However, high job turnover is also a source of insecurity for workers, especially those who are displaced from their jobs because their employer downsizes its workforce or goes out of business altogether. A common challenge facing OECD governments is thus to nurture labour market dynamism while keeping the adjustment costs that are borne by displaced workers as low as possible.

To address this issue the OECD Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee is carrying out a thematic review of policies to help workers who lose their jobs for economic reasons or as a result of structural change to move back into work. Nine countries participate in this review: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States.

This report on Finland was prepared by Ann Vourch from OECD’s Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate and Merja Kauhanen from the Labour Institute for Economic Research in Finland, under guidance and supervision of Christopher Prinz. Statistical assistance was provided by Dana Blumin, Sylvie Cimper and Agnès Puymoyen and editorial assistance by Gabriela Bejan and Jade Baker. Special thanks go to Kristiina Huttunen from the University of Helsinki for providing all FLEED data tabulations. Comments were provided by Mark Keese and Stefano Scarpetta. The report benefited greatly from discussions with Finnish experts, officials, employer federations, trade unions, academic and businesses during a mission of the OECD team to Finland in November 2015, and from comments to a draft version provided by several Finnish ministries and stakeholders.

Julkaisun tiedot

Prinz, C., Vourch, A., & Kauhanen, M. (2016), Back to Work: Finland: Improving the Re-employment Prospects of Displaced Workers, OECD, Paris.

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