Dynamics of job creation, restructuring and industrialisation in rural Finland

Abstract

This study analyses the socio-economic transformation of Finnish peripheral areas. Changes are scrutinised in the context of industrial restructuring in order to unravel the mechanisms that impact on rural transformation. A policy shift towards
rationalisation of the primary sector commenced in the mid-1960s, and regional policy promoted rural industrialisation. In recent years depopulation combined with improving productivity in services has restricted the growth of public sector employment in the northern, north-eastern and eastern parts of the country. The analysis ends by scrutinising the impacts of the boom in the information and communication technology sector on the rural economic landscape at the turn of the millennium. Two geographically almost identical industrial development patterns are detected: the regional policy-based rural manufacturing boom of the 1970s and the reindustrialisation period at the turn of the millennium, led by the growth and spatial expansion of the information and telecommunication
technology cluster.