Helsinki foreign workforce has grown to 15 per cent of the city’s total employees, reflecting a long-term demographic shift and highlighting both opportunities and challenges in the local labor market. New city data shows foreign-background staff are concentrated in health and social services, while their presence in senior roles remains limited. At the same time, Finland’s second-generation immigrant population has surpassed 100,000, underlining the long-term impact on the workforce.
By the end of 2023, Helsinki employed nearly 6,000 people with a foreign background. This group now makes up 15 per cent of the city’s total staff, a rise from previous years and roughly matching their share of the working-age population.
This increase mirrors broader trends across Finland. Statistics Finland reports that the number of Finland-born residents with a foreign background exceeded 102,000 in 2025, doubling over the last decade.
Markus Rapo, senior statistician at Statistics Finland, notes that “second-generation foreign-background residents are still largely young. Nearly 38 per cent are under school age.” This indicates that their participation in the labor market will continue to grow over the coming years.
In Helsinki, foreign-background employees are not evenly spread across roles. The city reports that one in five workers in health and social services comes from a foreign background, with many working in early childhood education and healthcare support roles.
More than half of foreign-background staff are employed in care and healthcare positions at operational levels. In areas such as cleaning and food services, this share reaches 55 per cent.
However, representation drops sharply in higher positions. Only one per cent of managers in the city workforce have a foreign background. Among specialists, the figure is six per cent, rising to just over ten per cent among experts.
Language plays a significant role in career advancement. Among managers and specialists, more than half speak a European language as their mother tongue. Employees with Somali, Middle Eastern, or North African language backgrounds are more likely to hold operational roles rather than managerial positions.
Women make up the majority of Helsinki’s workforce, and this pattern is even stronger among foreign-background staff. Approximately 80 per cent of this group are women, reflecting broader labor market trends and barriers faced by foreign-background women in accessing employment opportunities.
Language patterns differ between men and women. Around a quarter of male employees speak a Middle Eastern or North African language, while Russian and Asian languages are more common among women. The city links this to recent international recruitment efforts, including hiring care workers from countries such as the Philippines.
Somali speakers represent a distinct subgroup within Helsinki’s foreign-background workforce. Their share exceeds their proportion in the working-age population. One in four Somali-speaking employees was born in Finland, and more than half of Finland-born foreign-background staff in the city speak Somali.
Across Finland, individuals with a foreign background make up 11.7 per cent of the population, or around 660,800 people, at the end of 2025. Second-generation residents account for over 100,000 of this total.
The population structure continues to change. Ukrainians became the largest group of foreign citizens in Finland during 2025. Russian remains the most common mother tongue among foreign-language speakers, with more than 100,000 individuals.
Population growth has slowed, with the total population increasing by 16,910 in 2025, down from previous years due to lower migration levels.
The rise of foreign-background employees in Helsinki signals both opportunities and challenges. While these workers are filling crucial roles in healthcare and social services, their limited representation in senior positions highlights barriers to career advancement. Language, gender, and recruitment patterns all play a role in shaping workforce dynamics.
As Finland’s second-generation immigrant population grows, the city faces a choice: invest in inclusion and professional development or risk widening the gap between operational roles and leadership positions. The coming years will be crucial in defining how Helsinki integrates its increasingly diverse workforce into all levels of the labor market.
