Over a third of municipal workers will retire in ten years

Helsinki (12.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) By 2019 more than a third of the 437,000 municipal workers will retire. In the future, development and provision of services may prove to be even more difficult for municipal organisations as the increasingly stressful work may compel more employees to seek early retirement than predicted.

The worst prospects concern cleaning. By 2019 over half of the municipal cleaners will retire. The health and home care sectors will also face huge recruitment requirements. Almost half of hospital and home care assistants will retire in ten years.

Municipalities are not sufficiently prepared to compete for labour, JHL,
the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors, has repeatedly warned. In the coming years the problem will be aggravated as more people will leave (because of retirement) than join the total labour force in Finland. JHL stresses that the best way to meet this challenge is to make municipal jobs and work places more attractive.

Due to the recession, the present employment situation offers a good opportunity to recruit new employees for municipalities but because of tight saving programmes this opportunity is being lost, says Tuomo Halmeenmäki regretfully. He works as the head statistician at the local government pensions institute KEVA.