Finland's Pay Transparency Law: What Changes for Job Seekers
Finland is bringing in a new EU-driven law that will require employers to tell you the salary range before your first interview. Here is what it changes, what it does not, and where the delayed timeline now stands.
Published 31 March 2026·Updated July 2026·7 min read
72%
of active Finnish listings show no salary today (last 30 days)
Late 2026
earliest expected entry into force in Finland; the EU's 7 June 2026 deadline was missed
Banned
employers asking about your previous salary
Sources: EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) · Finnish government proposal, status as of July 2026 · jobcrawls.com disclosure data, last 30 days to 31 March 2026
01
The State of Play Right Now
If you have spent any time job hunting in Finland, you already know the frustration. You find a role that looks right, the title fits, the location works, and then you scroll to the bottom of the listing and find nothing where a salary should be. No range, no indication, not even a vague bracket.
72%No salary shown
No salary info72%
Shows a figure28%
Last 30 days · 9,877 active Finnish listings · Source: jobcrawls.com
This is not an anomaly in one sector. It is the default across virtually every field in Finland. Of the roughly 9,900 active Finnish listings tracked by jobcrawls.com over the last 30 days, nearly three in four contained no salary information at all. Only 28% showed any figure, and those were mostly hourly or monthly rates in healthcare and education, where public sector collective agreements make disclosure standard.
Salary Disclosure by Field
% of listings showing any salary · Last 30 days · Finland · Active listings only
Healthcare
44%
Education
42%
Customer service
25%
Sales
22%
Hospitality
21%
Transportation
20%
Technology
19%
Construction
16%
The most striking figure is in Technology. Finland's highest-paying field discloses salary in fewer than one in five listings. If you are a software engineer, a data scientist, or a product manager looking for work in Finland right now, you are applying to roles with almost no idea of the pay on offer. That is the baseline the new law is changing. Our companion analysis of salary transparency across Finnish job listings breaks the disclosure gap down by field, seniority, and work arrangement.
02
What the Law Actually Is
This is an EU law, not a purely Finnish one. The EU Pay Transparency Directive (Directive 2023/970) was adopted in 2023 and required all 27 EU member states to bring it into national law by 7 June 2026. Finland missed that deadline, along with most other member states. The government's proposal reached Parliament in mid-2026, and the law is now expected to take force in late 2026 at the earliest, possibly early 2027.
Finland's proposal sticks closely to the directive's core requirements, and in some areas extends them a little more broadly across employers. Either way, the core obligations represent a real shift for how hiring works here.
Late 2026 / early 2027
Expected entry into force in Finland (the 7 June 2026 EU deadline was missed)
Before interviews
When employers must share the salary range with you
The most important thing to understand is what the law does and does not require. Salary ranges do not have to appear in job advertisements. Finnish employers can still post a listing with no pay figure shown. The obligation kicks in during the recruitment process itself: before the first interview, or at the very latest before any salary negotiation begins, the employer must provide you with the salary or salary range for the role.
💡
What this means in practice
You will likely still see many job ads with no salary listed. But once the law takes effect, being invited to interview will come with a right to the salary range before that conversation starts. You should not have to ask for it.
Employers are also banned from asking about your salary history. In practice, Finnish recruiters sometimes ask what you currently earn as a way to anchor negotiations around your existing pay rather than the market rate for the role. That practice becomes illegal under the new law.
Once the law takes effect, you have legal backing to ask for what you previously had to guess at.EU Pay Transparency Directive · Finnish entry into force expected late 2026 or early 2027
04
Your New Rights as an Employee
The law does not only affect the hiring process. Once employed, you gain a set of new rights around pay information.
Annual right to pay comparison
You can request written information on your own salary and the average salary of colleagues of the opposite gender doing equivalent work. Your employer must respond within two months.
Protection from retaliation
You cannot be penalised, dismissed, or treated negatively for requesting pay information, helping a colleague make such a request, or discussing your salary with others. These protections are explicit in the law.
Pay gap reporting for larger employers
Employers with 100 or more staff must report gender pay gap data through Finland's Incomes Register, with the largest employers (250+) reporting annually and smaller ones on a phased, less frequent timeline. Where a gap of more than 5% in any category of workers cannot be justified, the employer must take remedial action.
📌
Worth noting
The law does not mean everyone at a company will earn the same salary. Employers can still set different pay levels based on skills, experience, and performance. What changes is that those differences must be based on objective, non-discriminatory criteria, and you have new tools to check whether your pay is in line with your peers.
jobcrawls.com
jobcrawls.com already surfaces salary data on Finnish listings where it exists. Filter by field, city, seniority, and salary range to see what employers are paying today, and use that context before your next negotiation.
You are still under the old rules: salary will not automatically appear in listings, and employers are not yet obligated to provide it before interviews. Many larger Finnish employers are already moving toward transparency ahead of the change. Filter jobcrawls.com by salary to find listings that do disclose figures and get market context for your negotiations.
2
Once the law is in force
Being invited to interview will come with a legal right to the salary range before that conversation starts. You should not have to ask for it, and if a range does not arrive, you are entitled to request it.
3
Salary-history questions are off the table
Employers are banned from asking what you currently earn. Do not let a recruiter anchor negotiations to your existing pay rather than the market rate for the role.
4
If you are already employed in Finland
Once the law is in force you can request pay comparison data annually. A written request to HR is the standard route, and your employer has two months to respond in writing. You should not need to make a formal complaint to receive it.
05
The Bigger Picture
Finland's salary transparency problem is not unique, but it has been more persistent here than in many comparable markets. The new law does not solve it overnight. Job ads will not suddenly show salary ranges the day it takes effect, and enforcement will take time to settle in. What the law does is give job seekers new leverage and new rights they did not have before.
For job seekers in Finland, the most practical thing to do right now is understand what you are entitled to, use the salary data that already exists to benchmark your position, and know that once the law takes effect you will have legal backing to ask for what you previously had to guess at.
About the data. Salary disclosure figures on this page are based on 9,877 active Finnish job listings from the 30-day period ending 31 March 2026, crawled by jobcrawls.com directly from company career pages and Työmarkkinatori. Disclosure rate is calculated as listings where a salary figure is present divided by total listings in that field. Listings with no field classification are excluded. Legal details reflect the EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) and the status of Finland's implementing legislation as of July 2026: Finland missed the EU's 7 June 2026 transposition deadline, and the law is expected to enter into force in late 2026 or early 2027. Final Finnish provisions may still change before then.
John Spina is the lead author behind JobCrawls’ career and labour-market guides for Finland: regional hiring snapshots, salary explainers, transparency rules, and step-by-step playbooks for CVs, LinkedIn, and networking. The pages are grounded in aggregated Finnish job-market data and editorial standards so international and local readers get consistent, actionable context.
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Article formatting generated with Claude using JobCrawls data