Redundancies up by 20%
The number of people let go by firms in Finland spiked by nearly one-fifth last year compared to 2010. Nokia led the pack, cutting 2200 jobs in its home country.
In 2011, more than 10,600 employees were fired, compared to just over 8900 the year before. The number is still far less than in 2009, though, when almost 20,000 employees were sent packing. The figures were released by the largest labour confederation, the SAK, on Thursday.
The largest numbers of redundancies came at publicly-listed companies. Publicly-traded firms accounted for about 70 percent of all job cuts. In the three previous years, their share had been less than 50 percent.
Besides Nokia, the largest number of firings was at forest products giant UPM (563), followed by the postal company Itella (548).
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