Nokia’s Labor Inflows and Outflows in Finland: Observations from 1989 to 2010

Nokia’s ascent, dominance, and descent have resulted in significant labor inflows and outflows in Finland. In this paper, we document the aspects of these flows using official register-based data covering virtually all individuals and organizations in Finland. Our setup may be compared to a laboratory experiment on the impacts of a single company on a country. During the 1990s, a large share of Nokia recruits were recent college graduates. Most of these recent graduates assumed various specialist and managerial positions at Nokia. During the 2000s, Nokia has been a good source of highly skilled labor for other businesses in Finland. More recently, an increasing share of former Nokia employees has been engaged with startups. Additionally, the proportion of former Nokia employees who have migrated to public sector jobs has grown.