A growing proportion of Finns are hesitating to make major purchases, such as home renovations, according to a survey by the Federation of Finnish Financial Services. Half have either abandoned planned purchases or postponed them due to low confidence in the economy.
The FA citizen survey has been conducted in Finland every year since 2022, asking Finns how the global political situation affects their own or their family’s plans for major purchases, such as renovations or buying a holiday home.
In December 2024, 26% of respondents said that they had postponed major purchases due to the unstable world situation. Another 23% had completely abandoned their plans.
– According to the survey, Finns’ confidence in their own economy seems to remain very low, says Arno Ahosniemi, Managing Director of the Finnish FA, in a press release.
In the previous survey, conducted in February 2024, only 11% of Finns said they had completely abandoned their plans and showed more signs of optimism about their finances. Now, however, Finns’ economic uncertainty has returned to the same level as when it was at its lowest in 2023.
– At the beginning of 2024, Finns still had a clear perception that the worst was over and that more stable and better economic times were on the way, says Ahosniemi. The pressing question is how to make Finns believe in a better and safer future.
Confidence in the future varied between age groups. Among Finns aged 18-49, 60% had postponed or abandoned their planned purchases, while the corresponding figure for 70-79 year olds was 30%.
Finland also saw an increase in the number of unemployed in December, with the unemployment rate reaching 8.9%, and a large number of highly educated people in the country are also out of work, reports the Finnish state broadcaster Yle. In December, 52,000 highly educated Finns were unemployed, which is the highest figure since 2015.
