Help Wanted: Finn

How does an 80% labor force participation rate grab you? That’s what Finland will need in order to maintain its present welfare model. From Straits Times:

HELSINKI (BLOOMBERG) – Finland is ranked the world’s happiest country, but its population is ageing faster than most and that’s putting pressure on the government to get more people into jobs to help pay for those retiring.

Fixing the country’s labour market is likely to dominate the agenda when Finns go to the polls on April 14 to elect a new government.

The new administration will need to raise the employment rate to 75 per cent of working-age Finns by 2023, and to 80 per cent after that, according to a civil servants’ report published on Monday (Jan 28) that outlines the key challenges ahead.

The rate is now at 72 per cent, meeting a 2015 target set by Prime Minister Juha Sipila which back then was deemed borderline impossible.

That year, just 68 per cent of working-age people had jobs, the country was clawing its way out of a three-year economic slump – its second since the financial crisis – and the mood was grim.

Now with about 140,000 more people at work compared to when Sipila took office, roughly 150,000 more jobs are still needed to safeguard the northernmost euro member’s welfare model, the report said.

Sounds to me like the problem is that there just aren’t enough Finns. They’re not alone. It’s a problem for many small countries, particularly those with distinctive languages and cultures and at least one large country has it, too: Japan.

Immigration is not a great solution, either. Their system depends on strong social cohesion, Finnish is a tough language to learn and only useful in Finland, and so on. They’ve been receiving and accepting immigrants lately who’ve reported they like it but my guess is the number of people who want to learn Finnish is limited. The Finns are not particularly chatty and are notoriously stubborn.