18. Finland

This country profile highlights current inclusive entrepreneurship policy issues and recent developments in Finland. It also presents self-employment and entrepreneurship data for women, youth, seniors and immigrants and benchmarks the indicators against the European Union average.

    

Key trends

The overall self-employment rate declined slightly over the past decade, falling from 12.6% in 2009 to 11.6% in 2018. This decline was observed among key under-represented and disadvantaged groups such as women, youth and seniors. Moreover, the proportion of the self-employed with employees also declined slightly, notably among self-employed immigrants – this proportion declined from 34.1% to 26.2%. However, Finnish entrepreneurs were more likely to self-report an expectation to create at least 19 jobs over the next five years between 2014 and 2018 than the previous five-year period (2009-13). It is notable that women entrepreneurs closed the gap relative to the EU average for both measures.

Hot issue

It is estimated that up to 1.9 million working age people experience a disability or chronic disease and about one-third of them find that their work or work opportunities are affected. This number is expected to rise as the population ages. The government launched the OTE key project “Career opportunities for people with partial work ability” (2015-18) to identify solutions for keeping people who experience disability active in the labour market. The project made a series of recommendations in 2018, including improving access to labour market information and addressing incentive traps, which will help people learn about labour market opportunities and self-employment. The project also developed new online information resources and service offices.

Recent policy developments

The updated Government Programme was launched in May 2018. It includes an updated “Entrepreneurship Package” focusing on new forms of entrepreneurship and working modes such as the platform economy and combinations of entrepreneurship and waged work. Rapporteurs appointed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs released a proposed strategic action plan for entrepreneurship in late 2018. It included 45 proposals to modernise entrepreneurship policy, notably through reforming the social security system for more equal treatment of the self-employed relative to employees.

This profile is based on a recent country assessment report, which can be found at: www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/inclusive-entrepreneurship.htm.

Key inclusive entrepreneurship data

Figure 18.1. Entrepreneurship and self-employment data for Finland

Notes: The self-employment rate is defined as the number of self-employed people (15-64 years old) divided by the number of people in employment. The TEA rate is the proportion of adults (18-64 years old) involved in setting up a business or managing a business that is less than 42 months old. Necessity entrepreneurship is defined as entrepreneurship activities that were launched because there were no other options in the labour market. Early-stage entrepreneurs are those who are in the process of setting up a business or managing a business that is less than 42 months old. The EU average in Panels D-F excludes Czech Republic and Malta for the period 2014-18 and Malta for the period 2009-13.

Sources: Panels A and B: Eurostat (2019), Labour Force Survey, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/database; Panel C: Eurostat (2018), Self-employment, Labour Force Survey ad-hoc module, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/lfs/data/database; Panels D-F: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2019), Special tabulations of the GEM survey 2014-18.

 StatLink https://doi.org/10.1787/888934066748