Pay subsidies are available for:
- companies
- associations, foundations, registered religious organisations or parishes
- wellbeing services counties, joint county authorities for wellbeing services or separated tasks of the City of Helsinki Social Services, Health Care and Rescue Services Division
- municipalities or joint municipal authorities if the employee has diminished work ability or has been unemployed for a long time and is over 60 years old.
If you would like to recruit a person eligible for a pay subsidy, you can open a work position supported by a pay subsidy. Find out more about publishing a pay subsidy position on the Job Market Finland(Link leads to external service) .
If you need help, contact the Helsinki Employment Services.
Amount and duration of the pay subsidy
The amount and duration of the pay subsidy depends on the background of the person hired.
How much is the pay subsidy?
For businesses, the subsidy is paid to the employer at 50% or 70% of gross pay. The maximum amount of the subsidy is €1,260 or €1,770 per month.
When an association, foundation or registered religious organisation hires a person who has been unemployed for more than two years, the pay subsidy can cover 100% of the salary costs. A salary corresponding to up to 65% of the maximum regular working hours in the industry is considered for the salary costs. The eligible salary costs are multiplied by a factor of 1.23. However, the subsidy may not exceed €2,020 per month.
If the pay subsidy is granted at 100% for business activities, the subsidy is granted on a de minimis basis.
For how long can I receive a pay subsidy?
The duration of the pay subsidy depends on the background of the person hired.
In general, the subsidy can be granted for 5 or 10 months. If you hire a person with partial work ability, you can receive support for up to 24 months at a time.
On the basis of an apprenticeship contract, the pay subsidy can be granted for the entire duration of the training. If you hire a long-term unemployed person over 60, the duration of the subsidy may be longer than usual.
Conditions for granting pay subsidies
A pay subsidy may be granted if you hire an unemployed jobseeker living in Helsinki. To qualify, certain conditions relating to the employer, the employee and the employment relationship must be met.
If you have made employees redundant for economic or productive reasons in the last 12 months, you can only receive pay subsidies if the redundancies have not led to a reduction in staff numbers.
Temporary lay-offs do not prevent you from receiving pay subsidies.
The employer cannot receive a pay subsidy if it has materially neglected its obligation to pay wages, salaries, taxes or statutory fees.
The person hired must be an unemployed jobseeker living in Helsinki. For example, self-employed people, students and job-transitioners do not usually meet the definition of unemployment. The job offered must also boost the recruit’s position on the job market once the pay subsidy period has ended.
The appropriateness of granting pay subsidies is assessed by the Helsinki Employment Services.
Pay subsidy may be granted for improving professional competence when the person hired belongs to one of the following categories:
- 15–24-year-olds
- 50 and older
- persons who have not completed the matriculation examination, an upper secondary vocational qualification or a comparable foreign upper secondary qualification
- immigrants for whom an integration plan or a multi-sectoral integration plan has been or may be drawn up
- persons who have not been employed during the previous six months.
Pay subsidies may also be granted for:
- employing those with diminished work ability
- employing a long-term unemployed person aged 60 and above
- an apprenticeship for the duration of the entire training.
A pay subsidy may be granted if you hire an unemployed jobseeker living in Helsinki for a permanent or fixed-term employment relationship on a full-time or part-time basis. The subsidy may also be granted for apprenticeships.
The pay subsidy is not applicable to work paid on a commission basis or to an employment contract based on a so-called zero-hour agreement.
Pay-subsidised work is a normal employment relationship for the employer and does not give the employer any special rights or impose any special obligations on it.
Please note that a pay subsidy cannot be granted if the employment relationship has started before the decision to grant the subsidy was made.
The subsidy is intended for hiring a jobseeker aged 55 or above who has been unemployed for at least 24 months in the last 28 months.
The employment subsidy is 70% of the salary, up to a maximum of €1,770 per month. It has a maximum duration of 10 months.
The subsidy is granted when the conditions for the employer, the employment relationship and the person hired are met.
How to apply for payment
Apply for pay subsidy payment by logging in to
the Job Market Finland Business E-services(Link leads to external service)
.
Helsinki Employment Services will be responsible for paying the pay subsidy on the basis of your application. We process applications in the order in which they are received. If you need help, please email us at
palkkatuki@hel.fi(Link opens default mail program)
.