Podcast: The Duck Pond #7: Var finns jobben på svenska?
I det här avsnittet av The Duck Pond funderar Gregory Pellechi på hur det är att hitta jobb som invandrare och om de som integreras på svenska har svårare att hitta jobb än andra.
Immigrants face additional obstacles when it comes to gaining employment so Gregory Pellechi explored if there are additional hindrances for those learning Swedish.
Work is how most people define themselves and their lives. In my case, I find that I consider myself a journalist, and this podcast is further proof of that. For other immigrants it may not be so easy to define themselves, because they may find themselves having to define and justify their existence to others first. All because they have to prove not just a language but their education and skills.
Finland finds itself in a position not unlike the United States, where minorities have to work harder to even get a job interview. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy published a report entitled Discrimination in the Finnish Labor Market: An Overview and a Field Experiment on Recruitment which shows that those with foreign names have to apply to twice as many positions as Finns with Finnish names.
For all the insistence that immigrants get a job, the government and the people of Finland do little to enable that. Statistics for the capital region show immigrants have an unemployment rate of 26.9%, with OECD statistics from 2014 showing an average rate of 16.8% for immigrants across the nation.
Probably the most difficult thing for immigrants looking for jobs in Swedish in Finland is finding them. Yes there’s Jobben.fi and other job websites where you’ll find a position advertised as either requiring Swedish or benefiting from occasionally. But there’s no data for the how many companies are Swedish speaking, though the Chamber of Multicultural Enterprises in Helsinki did find that only 34% of companies in the capital region use Swedish.
So if Finns and Finland Swedes, in particular, want to welcome immigrants and get them to work then they have to tell us where the jobs are. And while the Ministry of Employment and the Economy predicts a drop in unemployment, long-term unemployment is set to rise. That combined with the coming cuts to benefits is going to adversely affect immigrants regardless of what language they’re integrating in.
This episode included the Students of Hanken School of Economics, Stig-Erik Herrgård, Erik Holmquist and Anita Sahlström.
