Finland's benefits agency has reported that its expenditure on unemployment benefits amounted to four billion euros in 2024.
It said the spending figure reflected a five percent increase over the previous year.
It also said that earnings-related jobless benefits grew by a significant margin, to just over two billion euros, while spending on basic dole payments decreased to around 1.91 billion euros.
According to Kela researcher Laura Peutere, there was an increase in recipients of both types of unemployment benefits last year.
"Although the number of recipients of earnings-related benefits was smaller and that of recipients of basic unemployment benefits higher at the end of 2024 compared with year-end 2023, when we look at the statistics for the entire year of 2024, there were more recipients of both earnings-related benefits and basic unemployment benefits than in 2023," Peutere said in a press release on Thursday.
The agency broke down the benefits that contributed to the increase in last year's unemployment benefit spending:
"The expenditure on earnings-related benefits grew by 10.6 percent, while the expenditure on basic unemployment benefits decreased by 1.0 percent. In real terms, the expenditure on unemployment benefits grew by 3.1 percent compared with 2023. The number of compensated days grew by 7.5 percent for earnings-related benefits and by 4.5 percent for basic unemployment benefits," Kela's release explained.
Unemployment continues to rise
Finland's unemployment has continued to worsen over the past couple of years.
Last week, it was reported that Finland currently has Europe's second-worst unemployment rate — 10.1 percent, just slightly behind Spain's 10.3 percent.
In September of last year, Finland's unemployment stood at 8.4 percent, according to figures from Statistics Finland. The previous year, in 2023, there were 30,000 more people who had jobs, according to employment ministry data.
