Respond online

If you have been selected as a respondent, we have sent you a letter home. We also use text messages and email. You can log in to the web form via the Suomi.fi service by pressing the Start responding button above. 

If you have received a text message or an email from us, you can follow the instructions there. More detailed instructions for answering can be found on the questionnaire form.

If you want to give your response in a telephone interview

Set up a time for an interview by contacting the statistical interviewer. You can find the contact information in the letter sent to you.

You⁠ participate in the survey two to five times

The same respondent is interviewed two to five times over a period of eighteen months. The average duration of responding is five to ten minutes. Respondents may permit another person to respond on their behalf in a telephone interview.

Why is our interviewer trying to
reach you?

We want to give all those selected to the survey the opportunity to take part. If we have not received your response online and you have not tried to set up a time for the interview, our statistical interviewer may also try to reach you through some other adult member of your household or by visiting your home address (the corona situation permitting). 

Your response is needed for producing statistics.

The Suomi.fi identification is a joint identification service for public administration. The service enables secure electronic identification with the identification token selected by you. Finnish bank identifiers, a mobile certificate and a certificate card can be used for identification. 

https://www.suomi.fi/instructions-and-support/identification

The survey concerns all population groups: employees, self-employed persons and persons who are not gainfully employed, such as pensioners, students, home-makers and unemployed. 

Altogether 12,500 persons aged 15 to 89 who are interviewed for the survey each month were drawn randomly from Statistics Finland’s database on the population of Finland. You have been selected to represent people of your age living in your area. The selection has been made with statistical methods. The responses provide reliable statistical data on people living in Finland and their life situations.

Everybody's answers are of key importance to the survey as it aims to provide as reliable as possible a picture of the labour market situation of the entire population. Each person selected to the survey represents persons in their age group living in their area in the survey and no one can be replaced with someone else. However, respondents may permit another person to respond on their behalf in a telephone interview.

The Labour Force Survey questions concern work for which pay or earned income is received, working hours, job seeking and ways of job seeking. There are also questions about education. Some of the respondents are also asked additional questions with a yearly changing topic.

In autumn 2024, data are also collected on employees for the Working Life Barometer of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. 

Public attention is focused each month especially on the changes in employment and unemployment from the corresponding month in the previous year. The results of the survey
are used in preparing labour market projections and plans, as support for decision-making, and in the monitoring of the effects of different measures on employment.

Key users of the results are ministries, authorities responsible for regional planning, employer and employee organisations, universities and research institutions, international organisations and the European Union. At Statistics Finland, the data are used, for instance, in compiling national accounts.

The Labour Force Survey provides up-to-date information about the employment situation of Finns as a basis for research and social decision-making both in Finland and in the EU. Major users of the data also include the OECD and ILO and several research institutes in Finland and abroad. 

The data from the data collection are used in the following statistics:

• Labour force survey

Some of the Labour Force Survey respondents are invited by text message to the short additional Citizens’ Pulse survey commissioned by the Prime Minister's Office. Further information: www.stat.fi/kansalaispulssi_en.html

The Labour Force Survey is conducted all around the year. The results of the Labour Force Survey are published monthly, quarterly and annually. Monthly data are released approximately three weeks from the end of the survey month. Quarterly data are released simultaneously with the last monthly data of each quarter.

Your responses can be seen at Statistics Finland only by those employees who compile statistics based on the responses. Your data will be treated as strictly confidential and we will ensure your data protection at all stages of the production of the statistics. Every person employed by Statistics Finland has signed a pledge of secrecy.

We publish statistics in the manner that the responses of individual persons cannot be identified from the data.

The contact details of individual respondents are the address, email and telephone number
as well as corresponding information in the names of members of the same household. The data derive from the Population Information System and from those authorities from which data are obtained based on the Statistics Act. In addition, contact details are obtained from public sources, such as telephone operators.

Statistics Finland is also entitled to receive for surveys the contact information of persons who have a ban on direct marketing.

Your responses are confidential. We never release your responses for administrative decision-making, investigation, surveillance, legal proceedings or similar purposes, such as to the Tax Administration or the Social Insurance Institution of Finland.

We never hand over or sell your contact information outside Statistics Finland.