Operations of TE Services will be transferred to municipalities in 2025
Beginning in 2025, jobseeker services will be provided by municipalities. In conjunction with the reform, the individual local government employment trials will be discontinued throughout Finland.
Starting 1 January 2025, municipalities will begin to offer counselling and services to unemployed jobseekers. TE Services in their current form will cease operations. The responsibilities transferred to the municipalities largely correspond to the public employment and economic development services currently provided by the TE Services.
The municipalities will also take on added responsibility for the financing of unemployment benefits. In addition to labour market subsidies, they will provide funding for basic unemployment allowances and for the basic amount of the earnings-related unemployment allowance.
As part of the reform, the individual local government employment trials will be discontinued throughout Finland. The trials are scheduled to run in 2021–2024. Anyone enrolled in a trial will stay on as a client of their municipality until 1 January 2025, at which point responsibility for the provision of their services will be transferred to the municipality on a permanent basis.
Kela will receive labour policy statements from municipalities
The municipalities will also take on some of the current responsibilities of the TE Services around unemployment benefits. Tasks that involve discretion will remain a state responsibility and will be centralised to the KEHA Centre.
Following the reform, Kela will receive labour policy statements from municipalities and from the KEHA Centre. Kela’s decisions on unemployment benefits are based on these labour policy statements.
Clients do not have to contact Kela when they start to get job search services from their municipality.
If unemployment continues, clients must continue to complete regularly an unemployment status report based on which Kela will pay them unemployment benefits.