Helsingin Sanomat reported (in Finnish) yesterday, citing a report by AkavaWorks, that “There were […] 17 per cent more unemployed graduate engineers than a year earlier, and 15 per cent more holders of a Master of Science degree in the natural sciences were unemployed”. Unemployment amongst graduate engineers (diplomi-insinööri) had risen the second most among those with higher education qualifications. The only groups where unemployment had risen more in relative terms were social workers and university of applied sciences graduates in the social services sector.
The rise in unemployment among graduate engineers has been staggering. Since 2022, the number of unemployed graduate engineers has risen inexorably from around 1,700 to over 3,300. Due to the weak situation in the construction sector, the relative employment situation for architects appears to be weaker than that of engineers. Unemployment among graduate engineers (including the unemployed and those temporarily laid-off) stood at 5.5 per cent, whilst for architects it was 9.7 per cent at the end of July 2026.
It is interesting to note that 2.4 per cent of TEK members received earnings-related unemployment benefit from the KOKO fund due to unemployment or lay-off. Unemployment among TEK members is therefore significantly lower than the average for the profession.
One natural explanation for this situation is weak economic growth. It would now seem, however, that economists’ positive growth forecasts are on a more solid footing, and Nordea, for example, forecasts that gross domestic product will grow by 1.7 per cent this year and accelerate to 2 per cent next year. This could herald an improvement in employment.
Employment among recent graduates, in particular, has deteriorated. Compared with June last year, unemployment among newly qualified architects rose by as much as 57 per cent and among graduate engineers by 28 per cent. Fortunately, the absolute numbers are not large, but the relative increase is worrying.
The previous government expanded engineering degree programmes quite significantly. The rationale was that companies in the region needed graduates with a university education in engineering. The current unemployment situation raises the question of whether that was actually the case. At the very least, the timing was all wrong.
Employers should remember that the only way to increase the supply of experienced labour is to give recent graduates the opportunity to gain work experience. It would also be worth considering whether it is always essential to have a perfect command of the Finnish language in the workplace, or whether a slightly lower level of proficiency would suffice. As many as 28 per cent of those who graduated with a university degree in engineering in 2024 were not Finnish citizens.
