Roundup: Finnish government's 2017 budget sets raising employment ratio as main goal

While the target of halting the debt increase by 2019 is hard to reach, the Finnish government is aiming to raise the employment rate of its work force.

However, analysts said the 2017 budget published earlier this week did not give any concrete measures in this regard.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila still adheres to the goal of raising employment to 72 percent from the current 68 percent. The government said a solution will be worked out jointly by employers, trade unions and the government.

The government is working to make employment more attractive in comparison to unemployment benefits. But local commentators expect tough resistance from trade unions.

Under the current system, an unemployed person gets compensation based on his or her last salary for the initial 500 working days after leaving his or her job.

The government would like to reduce the compensation in stages if the unemployed person does not look for a job. As of Sunday, labor unions have shown great concern over this move.

There have also been talks about accepting salaries that are lower than union tariffs in some cases. In Finland, trade union tariffs are mandated by law as the minimum allowed, be an employee in the union or not.

The 2017 budget bill totals 55.2 billion euros (61.6 billion U.S. dollars). It is only 300 million euros (335 million dollars) more than the figures for 2016.

Sipila has said that "living on credit" will not stop until 2021 and the earlier governmental targets will not hold.

When announcing the budget late Thursday, the government gave most publicity to a few reforms the three ruling parties considered to be most favorable to their supporters.

The Finns Party got through their recent suggestion that the long-term unemployed over 60 years old would be pensioned off. The budget also includes an initiative from the Conservative Party on calling off a previous decision to increase daycare charges, as well as an initiative from the Center Party on assisting ailing agriculture.

The opposition parties criticized continued cutbacks in education and social services.

As the 2017 budget process has attracted major expectations of policy changes, the caution of the government has disappointed many analysts in the past days.

Matti Viren, an economics professor at Turku University, said the government could have altered the country's economic policies in 2015, but changes "remained rhetorical."

"Now the government has the second chance, but no major change is visible," Viren commented to news service Uusi Suomi.

He said much in the budget was directed to please the supporters of the coalition government parties and did not amount to economic policy changes.

He also criticized the comeback of "three side talks" among employers, unions and the government, saying it meant outsourcing the creation of labor reforms to those who "do not want reforms."

The leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in its editorial on Sunday expressed disbelief in the government's efforts to reach its employment goals.

The newspaper said that despite the three-side talks, the final decision is up to the government and it hardly wants to antagonize wage earners again. "In the budget talks, many matters were left half way," the newspaper commented.

Jyvaskyla-based daily Keskisuomalainen predicted on Sunday that the employment level will ultimately decide when to halt getting into further debt. "Success of the government will depend on its achievements in employment," the paper said. Endi