The challenges of the Nordic countries in a globalized world

Along with the rest of the Western World the Nordic countries are also in decline. This is a relative decline due to the fact that there are new winners in the globalized world. China is the most prominent example of a new rising economy that is shaking the old world order.

In this globalized world efficiency and competitiveness is vital. We need to be competitive in order to get investments which create more jobs. These jobs create welfare. We have a declining work force in Finland and large youth unemployment. According to the bank of Finland the word force in the private sector is declining by 0,2% annually until 2030 while the workforce in the public sector is increasing by 0,4% until the same year. This is due to the negative demographic growth where larger older age groups are withdrawing from the work market. These small percentages may not sound much. And are around average all over the Nordic countries except Sweden where they have a growing labor force due to larger immigration. More workers would push down prices of labor making the job market more efficient. The issues in the Nordic countries are the structural changes and the small amount of people. Old industries have been offshored to China. Several of the transnational companies have gone for cheap labor in China leaving large amounts of people unemployed. This labor force is forced to re-structuralize themselves which costs a lot of money for society during the transition. But this is a far cheaper solution than permanent unemployment.

Since we have a small and declining labor force several people have presented the idea of immigration. An increased immigration would revitalize the economy. This might be a part solution. But not much is talked about policies designed to increase child bearing families. Policies should be implemented to cut-off the negative demographic trend. Besides it is difficult to get skilled work force to a cold and dark North. If we are to get skilled work force there must be extensive marketing and awareness rising. It’s quite pointless to get unskilled labor force to the Nordic countries as it get expensive. How are our educational systems which are primarily designed to deal with homogenous populations going to cope with people far away? There are no magic switches that would make people all of a sudden functional in a new culture and its language. These things take time. Thus there should be put a priority on skilled labor force which would only need to learn the culture and language and the rules and laws of society.

 

Youth unemployment is around 18%-25% in Finland and around the same in the other Nordic countries, except in Denmark where youth unemployment is just about 10%. Youth unemployment is a big issue. In Finland there are about 40 or 50 thousand young people unemployed. The saddest part is that most of them are unskilled with only primary school education. Their issues are massive. They are not part of society in anyway. Saddest part is their personal misery but society pays terribly much for them. It’s expected that around 40% of those young people will be permanently unemployed. This trend has to be cut. One person who is cast away from society costs around 1,6 million euros to society. It means that the total cost for society would be at around 24 billion euros! In Finland. This is a terrible tragedy in a situation where Finland needs every single person to work and keep active in society, because we are so very few.

This trend must be broken. Measures are luckily already taken in order to deal with this issue.  With the youth guarantee policy by the Finnish government taking effect rather soon. We must ensure that these people get a prosperous future with jobs. It’s in nobody’s interest to have them become welfare bums. They are needed to help to take care of the ageing population. Besides we don't want a growing radicalization amongst the homeland population.

Furthermore the issue points are that careers usually start relatively late in Finland at around the age of 22-27. Those more highly educated start at the latter. The second issue is that a lot of people exit the labor market at around the age of 52 due to illness. The average retirement age is 60,4 when the target age is 64. How will we get people to work earlier and how will we get people to work longer? Because efficiency is ever more important now. At least for the time being when there are massive demographgic changes.

Could a country wide online-company-network slash public sector common labor market lessen the time of unemployment? Imagine if Finland or another country would create department of labor doing matching. Imagine a national matching-service. Where people could leave their CV’s and where employers could easily recruit workers. This would be an instrumental solution. Employer gets easily and quickly information of a possible employee who would match the job description. And job seeker, future employee, would get hired more quickly into a job. This could be a service that the country funds with public money as it would be of the interest of all. Issues are physical distances. How would these be solved? Must there be different geographical sectors for the employee etc?

There are of course many ''matching companies'' but a public one could be more accessible for small businesses. It could compete agaisn't the more expensive consulting firms. Thus supporting small businesses.
  
Thus the objectives are to: get people quickly from job to job. To maximize the labor forces potential. And to get the youth back to working. Policies must be implemented which encourage to create more jobs. We must get the people working again and create policies which support small businesses. So we can get real innovations. We must encourage innovations because that’s the way to create jobs. 

Denmarks flexsecurity as a model?

Labour markets for tomorrow

Opporunities for Youth

New foreign policy to help in competiveness?

We live in a globalized world and the issues facing the Nordic countries are large by far. Our advantages are a highly skilled (educated) work force a functional society with liberal democracy. We respect, we not only respect we love human rights. Lets compare with China. They have no functional liberal democracy. They are a one party technocratic state. Do they respect human rights? No. Do they thus respect the rights of the labor force? No. Furthermore they don’t even respect our intellectual properties our patents. They just copy everything and produce cheap copies to their own markets. Virtally making our products pointless in their markets. China has no functional  trade unions defending the rights of the labor market unlike the Nordic countries.

What is to be done in order to fix this unjust competition? How about enforcing transnational companies which aim to sell their products in European and American markets to enforce western laws in their offshore production facilitates. It’s not a very comparable competition if there’s different rules from country to country. We must ensure the human rights of the people in other countries. That’s our responsibility. After all we buy their products. Products must be ‘human right’ certified. To broaden the perspective this same principle could be expanded to environmental policies. Why would we want to buy products which are ruining the planet? (more than the ones we produce).

- Trade unions could also be used to spread human rights. Helping workers in developing countries to organize themselves.

The fundamental question and matter is to make the globalized part of the world to come on the same page. We need rules which are implemented on everyone not just for a few. Offshore oppression and neglect of human rights and the environment can no longer be tolerated. This is something we should promote in the EU-level and something America should also realize. I suggest that the western world should come together in this to make common rules which transnational companies have to respect, inorder for them to be able to sell their products in the respective markets.

It would be in our interest in the North to promote human rights and environmental policies on a global level. At least on that level we are the most competitive part of the world. And thus it would be in our very interest to promote those Nordic values.

The task will be difficult due to the special interest groups, but it's not an impossible task.