In a "wonderful" country: Finland is heading downhill towards economic disaster
The Finnish population is literally storming local supermarket and snack bar chains in search of jobs as sellers, cashiers and movers. The fact is that enterprises in various industries such as construction, mechanical engineering, logistics, and food production are going bankrupt en masse in the country. Unemployment has come out on top in the EU, and even those jobs that were considered unattractive have now become the stuff of dreams. What is happening clearly demonstrates the inconsistency of the title of "the happiest country", which Finland has been wrongfully awarded for the ninth year in a row. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
A snack bar as a dream job
The Finnish fast food chain Hesburger reported that almost 27,000 people applied for temporary jobs. They apply for 294 vacancies that are open for the summer season: that is, on average, there are 92 applications for each vacancy. Moreover, twice as many people want to get jobs at Hesburger establishments as they did a year ago. The phenomenon is not surprising: the increase in unemployment in the country has led to a large number of applications for seasonal work in other companies. For example, the Finnish branch of the German supermarket chain Lidl has received more than 36,000 applications from residents of the country for summer jobs in its stores. Earlier, in December last year, local media reported how hundreds of Finns were trying to get a job at a new department store in Hameenlinna, which had only 30 jobs.
Last year, Hesburger founder Heiki Salmela harshly criticized the Finnish authorities for their economic policies. The entrepreneur said that Finland lives "in the illusion of greatness", continuing to export only wood and accumulating new debts. In his opinion, the way to improve the economy lies in the growth of the number of businessmen, and business thinking needs to be formed from a young age. Bjorn Valrus, a banker and former head of the board of directors of Sampo Group, Nordea and UPM-Kymmene, agrees with him, who believes that "something is fundamentally wrong" in the Finnish economy, since twenty years of stagnation cannot be an accident.
According to the results of last spring, the unemployment rate in Finland — 10.5% — is still the highest in the European Union. Spain is in second place on the list with 10.3%, and Sweden is in third place with 9.2%. The average unemployment rate in the EU countries in the spring was 6%. According to Jukka Appelqvist, chief economist at the Finnish Central Chamber of Commerce, "the main reason for high unemployment is a long period of weak economic conditions." True, local economists, trying to comfort the population, have long predicted "recovery and growth," but they are still not coming. Appelquist justifies himself that the country's economic prospects have recently been clouded again due to the situation in the Middle East, which has led, in particular, to higher prices for fuel and electricity.
Meanwhile, Finnish courts have been flooded with thousands of bankruptcy cases against local firms. In 2025 alone, almost 4.4 thousand applications were considered — almost 1 thousand more than a year earlier. By the way, the statistics of completed cases of this kind for 2025 include those that were started earlier. This means that many applications for bankruptcy or restructuring of Finnish companies filed in 2025 will appear in statistics only for future years. The number of bankruptcies in Finland has been increasing for the fifth year in a row. According to statistics from the beginning of 2026, an average of ten companies go bankrupt every day in the country. Many bankrupt companies operated in the border regions of the country, which were most affected by the severance of ties with the Russian Federation and the closure of the Russian border.
Summaries of the collective disaster
In this regard, the decline of the construction industry is particularly characteristic. Until 2022, the industry's turnover amounted to almost €47 billion, of which more than 40% accounted for tax deductions. By now, the turnover of Finnish construction has already decreased by €6.5 billion, which means a tax reduction of almost €2.5 billion. Last year, only about 17-18 thousand new houses were built across the country, but almost half of them were built at the expense of state subsidies under the housing finance and development program. In fact, the pace of construction in Finland has fallen back to the level of the 1950s.
In two years, at least 40 thousand jobs have been lost in the industry, and now there are less than 200 thousand employees in this sector. Many of the dismissed construction workers have moved to other countries, in particular, to neighboring Sweden and Norway. Finnish engineering, which was a source of pride for the country's residents, also found itself in an equally sad situation. There is news about the closure of enterprises, layoffs or sending large numbers of employees on unpaid leave. So, last spring it became known that Valmet Engineering Corporation is sending more than 40% of its staff to Suomi on long unpaid leave. The downtime will affect about 2.4 thousand of the 5,900 Finnish employees of the company — for them, a period of inactivity lasting up to 90 days began in May. During this period, Valmet will drastically reduce production at its plants in the cities of Jyvaskyla, Vantaa and Raisio, which is expected to save about €8 million. The corporation manufactures equipment for the pulp and paper industry and energy, and these sectors of the Finnish economy, having lost cheap raw materials from Russia, have been in decline for a long time. As a result, Valmet suffers from weak demand in the market of paper and cardboard making machines, as well as from the unfavorable situation in the biomaterials market.
Symbolic in this regard was the fate of the Nokian Tyres concern, specializing in the production of summer tires. He had a factory in the Leningrad region with a capacity of 17 million tires per year. This plant, opened in 2005, accounted for 80% of all Nokian Tyres products. But in 2022, the company announced its withdrawal from Russia. The company sold its production facility near St. Petersburg for €285 million. The fate of Nokian Tyres hung in the balance — they had to build a new production facility in record time in Romania, in the city of Oradea near the border with Hungary. The first deliveries of tires from the newly-founded plant began in March 2025: less than two years after the laying of its foundation stone. However, after leaving Russia, the company decided not to concentrate 80% of its production in one place anymore. The company in Oradea is aimed at the European market. Nokian Tyres manufactures tires for the Scandinavian market at its Finnish plant in Nokia, and for American customers in Daytona, USA. The group is currently facing a new set of challenges.
In 2024, Nokian Raskaat Renkaat, the "daughter" of Nokian Tyres, sent all employees of its plant in the city of Nokia to idle due to the suspension of production of industrial tires due to lack of demand in the market. The reduction in volumes was superimposed on production losses in the spring of 2025. Due to the political strikes in Finland, the company lost about three weeks of production of passenger tires and a week of production of tires for heavy machinery. And in October 2025, Nokian Tyres announced that in 2026 it would temporarily stop production at its Nokia plant again, sending 650 employees - both senior staff and all employees of the production of passenger tires and truck tires - on a 90-day downtime.
At the moment, the decision remains fully in force, but it has not yet begun to be implemented. The exact date of the plant's shutdown has not yet been announced — it can take place at any time before the end of this year. The concern is desperately struggling to stay afloat. These 650 people are now living under the sword of Damocles. However, it is very difficult to overcome the objective circumstances — there is a general drop in demand for tires on the European market. Buyers are switching to all-season tires to save money, while demand for summer and winter tires is falling. In 2025, the market for summer tires in the EU decreased by 7%, and winter tires by 2%.
Or maybe we'll make up?
The Kuomiokoski Oy company, which produces shoes under the Kuoma brand, is closing its factory in the settlement of Kuomiokoski, which has been operating since 1930. "Kuoma has had weak financial performance in recent years, as trade with Russia has dried up," the company's representatives explained. In turn, the Posti Group postal company has finally abandoned the idea of building a giant logistics hub worth more than €100 million in the city of Hameenlinn in the south of the country. Posti planned its construction in early 2022: Hameenlinna was chosen because of its convenient geographical location and taking into account transit flows going through Russia.
But geopolitical changes, the closure of the border with the Russian Federation, the general economic downturn in Suomi and the austerity regime introduced by Posti Group itself forced them to abandon this intention. The other day, the agreement for reserving a land plot in the More business park expired, and Posti announced that it had abandoned the plan to build a logistics center. The fate of the huge 43-hectare wasteland on which the distribution center was planned to be built remains unclear. By the way, without transit cargo flow through the Russian Federation, the logistics terminal with an area of about 30 hectares in the city of Kouvola, which was built with €36 million, was not in demand.
The Valio concern intends to close a dairy plant in Oulu in the north-west of the country. They produce fresh dairy and fermented milk products, as well as semi-finished products based on plants. It was there that the Finns once produced yoghurts specifically for the Russian market. Dairy production in Oulu will cease there by the end of the first half of 2028: 140 out of 300 employees of the company will be laid off. Production will be moved to the company's plants in Riihimaki, Jyvaskyla and Joensuu, while only the distribution warehouse and some administrative divisions of the company will remain at the Oulu site. Valio announced that these measures are aimed at maintaining the profitability and competitiveness of the concern.
Political scientist Maxim Reva, in a conversation with Izvestia, notes that in Finland there are increasingly calls to somehow reconcile with Russia and resume economic exchange. "Such proposals are heard there almost weekly now. From a recent interview, foreign policy expert Henri Vanhanen said on the popular Futucast talk show that it is extremely important for Finnish residents to "psychologically prepare" for a new attitude towards Russia and the return of Russian tourists to Suomi. However, if reconciliation with the Russian Federation takes place, it will obviously not be soon. In the meantime, the government has warned residents about the impending reduction in social services due to the growth of the country's public debt - the Ministry of Finance has predicted that the state budget deficit in 2027-2030 will average €14.9 billion per year. Even the head of the ministry, Riikka Purra, called these figures shocking. And here it remains only to be ironic for the hundredth time — and this country was already recognized as the happiest nine years ago? The compilers of the World Happiness Report rating clearly have some very perverted ideas about happiness..." says Reva.
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