Annual Report of
Employment Fund 2023

Managing Director’s review

Employment Fund experienced successes and achieved many of its objectives during 2023. However, the Fund also experienced unpleasant surprises that changed our plans for the second half of the year.

At the start of the year, we successfully deployed our new information system for collecting and processing transition security contributions. We increased the degree of automation in the processing of applications for adult education allowances and extended the automated decision-making to applications for continued eligibility for the allowance.

Employment Fund’s Board of Directors approved the new strategic objectives for the Fund in May. In line with the updated objectives, we produce digital services reliably and with high quality, we increase productivity and efficiency, we create an excellent customer and personnel experience.

In our role as an executor of social security, we put great emphasis on social responsibility in our operations. In 2022 and 2023, we prepared a sustainability concept for the Fund to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals set by the UN in its 2030 Agenda. Sustainability is also reflected in such areas as our investment activities, acquisition of debt financing, and our equality and diversity work.

Unemployment insurance contributions will be lowered for 2024

The employment situation remained good and as a result, the Fund posted a clear profit surplus for the year and our business cycle buffer was approaching its maximum amount. Moreover, the economic and employment outlook as well as the fact that the measures set out in the Government Programme are estimated to decrease expenditure prompted us to propose a substantial reduction in unemployment insurance contributions for 2024.

The changes to unemployment security envisaged in the Government Programme will have limited impact on the expenditure financed by the Fund in 2024, but the impact will be greater in the coming years. Employee’s unemployment insurance contribution for 2024 is 0.79% (1.50% for 2023 and 1.50% for 2022) and average employer’s unemployment insurance contribution for 2024 is 0.82% (1.54% for 2023 and 1.51% for 2022). Other contribution rates change in the same manner.

Abolition of adult education benefits is a major change for the Fund and our customers

Petteri Orpo’s Government Programme’s appendix stated that the adult education allowance scheme would be abolished. This was later followed by an announcement that the scholarship scheme for qualified employees would also end.  

Discontinuation of the adult education benefits is a major change for Employment Fund even though our other statutory tasks will not be affected. Termination of the allowance scheme will also have substantial impacts on our personnel. In fact, the focus in the second half of 2023 was on change management and preparation for the change.

The Government proposal for the act abolishing the adult education benefits was submitted to Parliament in February 2024. The final form and approval of the act are still pending, and it has not yet been decided whether the adult education allowance scheme will be replaced with other types of support.

Customer satisfaction at an excellent level

We worked to ensure the best possible service level for advisory channel users and optimum processing times. We streamlined customer service paths and internal processing and increased process automation in benefit services.

As a result of these development measures, customer satisfaction with our services remained at an excellent level throughout the year even though the announcement that the adult education benefits would be abolished increased our workload. The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) indicating the percentage of satisfied and highly satisfied customers of all customers stood at 85% for 2023 as a whole.