Regional population development in Finland — an economic perspective

Abstract

Regional development has been an important topic in Finland for decades. This interest still increased during the 1990s which were a time of very rapid structural change in Finland (Tervo 2005). Finland was hit by a severe recession in 1991–93 and both production and employment fell sharply. The recession years deeply affected every region — almost every region lost one fifth of its jobs. While the recession treated regions “democratically”, the new growth based on the export and information technology industries took place highly unevenly across the country. Especially in the early phase of growth, new jobs were created only in a few big centres, which affected the direction of the rapidly increasing migration flows. For example, two thirds of the new jobs created during the period 1993–1996 were created in the three largest urban centres (Helsinki, Tampere, Turku) and only 9 percent of these jobs were found outside the ten most populated regions. As a result, in 2000 only six regions out of 82 had numbers of jobs at pre-recession levels.