No sign yet of AI hitting Finnish jobs or wages, economists at Etla say
The Finnish economic research institute says AI’s impact on work has barely begun, and warns that moving too slowly may be a bigger risk than moving too fast.
Martti Asikainen | 7.10.2026 | Photo by Etla
Artificial intelligence has not so far reduced employment or pushed down wages in Finland, according to research published on 23 September by the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (Etla).
The study, by Etla research director Antti Kauhanen and research adviser Petri Rouvinen, is based on updated monthly data covering the Finnish labour market as a whole.
It found no evidence that the introduction of generative AI has yet affected pay or employment. The paper is titled The AI revolution is more likely to increase than reduce human work.
Kauhanen said that, if anything, the data suggest the change has not yet begun in any broad sense.
Etla stresses that it is not claiming AI has no effect on work. AI can already carry out many tasks quickly and well, and the content of jobs in Finland will change considerably, the institute says. But it does not expect whole occupations to disappear, because jobs are made up of many tasks and only some of them suit AI. Etla says the negative effects of AI on work are exaggerated, while the positive ones are often overlooked.
"Dragging our feet is a real threat"
Finland currently has high unemployment, but Kauhanen says AI is not the reason. “The high unemployment currently seen in Finland is not caused by AI but is related to the economic cycle, other recent shocks, and changes to pensions, social security and the labour market system,” he said.
He described the debate about the end of human work as “both wrong and harmful”, while stressing that Etla did not want to downplay the upheaval AI is causing.
Rapid technological change can lead to calls to slow AI down. Rouvinen called that thinking backwards, because a slow-moving transition is itself a threat to human work.
“In a slow transition, there is a risk that old tasks do get replaced but we don’t get to enjoy the job-creating side of a fast-moving change at all,” he said. “That is why, in my view, we should get on board with applying AI quickly.”
Rouvinen said he hoped the debate would soon turn to how Finland, as a nation, can make agile use of the opportunities new technology offers.
Could AI help fix weak productivity?
The study is part of Cartagena, an Etla research project that began in 2024 and is funded by Business Finland. Its leader, research director Tero Kuusi, said Finland’s economy has long suffered from weak productivity growth, and that AI could improve productivity broadly.
He said the findings give grounds to shift the debate from guarding against AI’s risks to making use of it. It is worth asking, he added, whether the modest effects show that Finland’s labour market adapts well, or that AI is still being used too little in the country.
Kuusi also pointed to the electricity market as the place where AI and the green transition collide most directly. Electricity use by data centres and other computing is rising just as industry needs to electrify heavily to cut emissions. Whether these investment needs can be reconciled, so that there is enough clean electricity, is one of the big questions of the coming years, he said.
Etla adds that cutting emissions does not by itself settle productivity growth. What matters is where the freed-up resources go. If labour and capital released from emissions-intensive production move into high-productivity clean production, it says, climate goals and economic growth can support each other.
