A recent study by research organisation Labore sheds light on the connection between doctoral studies and the economic success of individuals and businesses in Finland. According to the results that are based on comprehensive register data from Statistics Finland, the annual salaries of doctors have been more than 5,000 euro higher in recent years compared to people with master’s degrees from similar fields and with similar backgrounds. However, doctors no longer have the same special advantage on the labour market as before.
“In the beginning of the 2000s, the labour market was quite intense for doctors. Since then, doctors and people with other degrees of higher education have converged in terms of both unemployment and salary trends,” says Research Director Tuomo Suhonen from Labore.
According to the study, the cooler labour market is also evident in slower salary trends for recent doctoral graduates. The salary trends have also slowed down in the 2010s compared to the average salary trends of people with higher education.
In light of the results, there are obvious risks associated with the ongoing doctoral education pilot that has the aim of educating a thousand new doctors by 2027.
“If new doctors graduate in a weaker economic cycle, there can suddenly be an oversupply of doctors on the labour market,” says Suhonen.
On the other hand, if the labour market is good, new doctors can have a positive impact on Finland’s economic growth through increased productivity.
These benefits could be seen in the study by looking at the performance of Finnish companies in the register data. According to the results, a small increase in the number of doctors among a company’s personnel is connected to a quite large average improvement in their average salaries and productivity.
Additional collaboration with institutes of higher education is one way for companies to benefit from hiring doctors. In fact, the study noted that increasing the share of employees with doctoral degrees in business or engineering is positively connected to the likelihood of the company collaborating with institutes of higher education.
The study was carried out by Senior Researcher Lauro Carnicelli and Research Director Tuomo Suhonen from Labore.
The study was funded by Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland TEK, KAUTE Foundation and Suomen Ekonomit.