2,600 euros per month was the most common monthly earnings for full-time employees in Finland in 2018, according to Statistics Finland's Structure of Earnings statistics, which describe the income of wage and salary earners working in public or private enterprises with more than five employees.
The figures show that the median of total earnings of full-time wage and salary earners was 3,079 euros per month. In statistics, the median is the value situated in the middle that separates the higher half from the lower half of a data sample. In this case, half of the people that participated in the survey earned more than 3,079 euros and the other half earned less.
By contrast, the average earnings -the sum of all earnings divided by the number of persons that participated in the survey- was 3,468 euros per month. The average is not usually representative of what the reality is for the majority of the population, who tend to better illustrated by the median and the most common values.
These figures are in gross, meaning that no taxes or other payments have been subtracted from them. Besides basic pay, they include all bonuses, overtime pay and benefits in kind, but no performance-based bonuses or holiday bonuses.
36% completed vocational qualifications
According to the official data, of all wage and salary earners included in the Structure of Earnings statistics, 36% have completed vocational qualifications.
Among them, the most common monthly earnings was 2,300 euros per month, amount earned by around 35,000 people. Correspondingly, for them the median income was 2,694 euros and the average was 2,881 euros.
Source: Statistics Finland
A majority of workers who completed basic education (35%) performed their duties as service and sales workers in 2018. The most common occupations in this group are care workers, such as social work assistants, childminders in kindergartens, health care assistants and home help workers.
The number of those working as salesperson was also considerable. Only 0.4% (this is means just 4 persons out of 1,000) of those with vocational qualifications worked as managers.
Source: Statistics Finland.
Earnings, linked to the field of study
According to Statistics Finland, the field of study of vocational education was linked with the level of hourly earnings in 2018.
The median hourly earnings of those with a qualification in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) was 3.9 euros higher than for example for wage earners with a qualification in health and welfare. Thus, the difference in hourly earnings was more than 20 per cent to the favour of ICT.
Source: Statistics Finland.
In addition to information and communication technology, the highest median earnings were found among graduates from technology (17.9 euros) and trade (16.7 euros).
Typical qualifications in these fields of education were diploma in information and communication technology, diploma in machinery, the metal industry, construction, electrics and the automobile sector, diploma in house building, and diploma in business and administration.
Over one-half of wage and salary earners with vocational qualifications in the field of health and welfare had completed vocational qualifications of a practical nurse in 2018. The share of those with vocational qualifications of practical nurse among all wage and salary earners with vocational qualifications was 13%.
