Finland
Profile written September 2026 · figures updated nightly
Where things stand
The latest published reading for each measure, with the last five years beside it.
the ECB's rate, which Finland has shared since 1999
01Structure
Finland's economy rests on three industrial pillars: forestry — pulp, paper, packaging and wood products, led by UPM and Stora Enso — machinery and metals, and telecommunications equipment, where Nokia has turned from phones to network infrastructure.1 Industry accounts for about sixteen per cent of value added, and research spending, above three per cent of GDP, is among the highest in Europe.
The forest industry is moving from paper, whose demand is in long decline, towards packaging, textile fibres and bio-based materials. That transition, and the collapse of Nokia's handset business a decade earlier, are why Finnish output took longer than almost any other in Europe to regain its 2008 level.
02Trade and exposure
Exports are a little over two fifths of output, dominated by forest products, machinery, electronics and chemicals, sold mainly to Sweden, Germany and the United States.
Russia was once a significant market and a supplier of timber and energy. That relationship is over: Finland closed its 1,300-kilometre eastern border in December 2023, and it has remained closed. The cost has fallen on the eastern border regions, where tourism, retail and logistics depended on cross-border traffic and where hundreds of firms have since failed.2
03Energy and resources
Finland imports only about a third of the energy it uses, one of the lowest ratios in the European Union, because it generates most of its electricity from nuclear, hydro and wind and burns its own wood residues for heat. It operates five reactors — three at Olkiluoto and two at Loviisa — including one of the few new large reactors completed in Europe this century.3
That position was deliberately built to reduce dependence on Russian energy, and it meant the 2022 shock hit Finnish electricity prices far less than those of Germany or Italy.
04Labour and demography
About seventy-six per cent of 20- to 64-year-olds are in work, and youth unemployment is among the highest in northern Europe at over twenty per cent. Unemployment has been markedly higher in the eastern border regions than nationally since the border closure.2
Demography is the longer-run constraint. By the end of 2025 about a quarter of Finns were aged 65 or over,4 one of the oldest populations in Europe, which tightens labour supply in care and industry at the same time as it raises public spending.
05Public finances
Finland's public finances have moved from surplus to persistent deficit over the past decade, driven by ageing costs, weak growth and, since 2022, a large increase in defence spending on the Russian border. Debt has risen accordingly and is expected to continue rising, and the deficit has been above the treaty reference value.5
Successive governments have responded with spending cuts that have themselves become a source of the regional strain described in section 02.
06Money and prices
Finland has set no policy rate of its own since 1999; the rate shown above is the European Central Bank's. It is one of the members whose cycle has most often diverged from the core: the forest-industry and Nokia shocks and the loss of Russian trade were Finnish, not European, and the common rate could not respond to any of them.
Most Finnish mortgages are tied to short-term Euribor, so ECB decisions pass into household budgets faster than in almost any other member.
07What the models expect
These are computed on this site from each series' own history, and are nobody's official projection. The bar is the range the figure lands in half the time; the dot is the central path.
Replayed from past origins on today's revised figures, the same baseline was usually off by 0.47 on consumer price inflation, 1.38 on real gdp, 0.52 on unemployment rate, 0.60 on central bank policy rate, 3.70 on government debt.
08Structural indicators
The figures behind the sections above. They move by a point or two a year, so each carries the year it was measured.
| Measure | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry, share of gross value added | 16.2% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Exports, share of GDP | 42.8% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Energy import dependency | 33.0% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| R&D spending, share of GDP | 3.2% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| Employment rate, ages 20–64 | 76.3% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Youth unemployment rate | 23.4% | Jul 2026 | Eurostat |
| Government deficit | −3.4% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Population aged 65 and over | ~24% | 2025 | Statistics Finland |
09Sources and method
Live figures: Eurostat, Bank for International Settlements. Each is fetched nightly and validated before publication; the delivery report on /status/ says how old every one of them is. Profile written 2026-09-11, next review September 2027.
- Industrial structure, the forest industry and Nokia — Finland Economy 2026
- The border closure and its effect on the eastern regions — Euronews, February 2026; OECD, transition strategies for Finland's border regions
- Finland's reactors at Olkiluoto and Loviisa — World Nuclear Association, Finland
- Population aged 65 and over — Statistics Finland, Finland in Figures 2026
- Deficit and debt path — Fitch Ratings, Finland, July 2026