The number of hours worked started to decrease in the last quarter of 2022
In the Helsinki region, the average number of hours worked in 2022 was two per cent higher than in 2021. The number of hours worked started to decrease slightly in the last quarter of 2022. In October–December, the total number of hours worked in the Helsinki region was approximately 318 million, which is one per cent less than in the previous year. Approximately 31 per cent of the total number of hours worked across the country took place in the Helsinki region. The number of hours worked in Finland was 1.3 per cent lower than in the previous year. Nearly 722 million hours were worked in Finland outside the Helsinki region in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The number of hours worked took an upward turn in the Helsinki region towards the end of 2017, and the growth continued both in the Helsinki region and Finland as a whole until the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of working hours started growing again in the second quarter of 2021.