Mothers with at least three children clearly less often employed than mothers with one or two children in 2025

Two out of three mothers with children aged one to two employed

When the youngest child has reached the age of one, 59 per cent of mothers have returned to work from family leave. In 2025, the employment rate was higher than in 2021 for those mothers whose youngest child was aged under three. For these mothers, the employment rate was 61 per cent in 2021 and 63 per cent in 2025, while the employment rate of mothers with older children remained unchanged or fell slightly. However, the employment rates of all mothers were higher between 2021 and 2025, but they have now fallen due to the weakened economic cycle. The employment rate fell by one percentage point even among those women who do not have children aged under 18.

The employment rate of mothers with foreign origin (56%) was lower than that of mothers of Finnish background (86%). Mothers of foreign background were younger and they had more often children under school age than mothers of Finnish background. Compared to mothers of Finnish origin, mothers of foreign background were more often unemployed, studying or looking after their own household.

In 2025, the employment rate of fathers with children aged under 18 was 90 per cent, which was one percentage point lower than in 2021. The employment rate of the men aged 20 to 64 without children aged under 18 was 72 per cent, which is almost on level with 2021.

Matters to be considered in the interpretation of database tables in the household section

The StatFin tables updated in connection with this release, based on interview data from the household module of the Labour Force Survey, contain the time series for 2013 to 2025. The Labour Force Survey was renewed at the beginning of 2021, when the time series were corrected retrospectively in accordance with the new estimation method.

In the correction procedure, the change in the definition of an employed person was considered on the level of the entire target group of women aged 15 to 74. However, the time series revised employment data on the subset level of women are subject to uncertainty due to the correction procedure, and the data for earlier years are not fully comparable with the figures produced since 2021.