Helsingin Sanomat writes this Thursday that the salaries of Finnish executives continue their runaway rise, with a new record in the gap between top and mid-range earners.
HS represents the change visually, indicating that one boss's combined salary and bonuses amounted to some 26.3 times the average employee wage in 2016 – the year when executive salaries grew twice as fast as those of mid-range salaried employees. The only higher proportion was a decade ago in 2007, when the end of the economic upswing saw CEO paychecks soar to 26.7 times the average worker's payday.
Most of the upward trend can be explained by big bonuses, HS writes in its analysis. Bonus payouts have grown 125 percent in size in some dozen years. The only money not counted in the long-running HS study are severance checks received by ousted bosses, which would extend the pay gap even more.
One example the paper raises is Stockmann retail chain ex-chief Per Thelin, who received 420,000 euros in severance pay last year. Additionally, Thelin also received a performance bonus of 325,000 euros for doing his job in 2015-16, bringing his total golden parachute up to three quarters of a million euros.
Construction sector workers needed
Regional paper Aamulehti features a dilemma in the construction sector. A lack of employees for construction jobs has plagued the executive branch of the industry, a shortage that AL writes may be spreading to construction workers more broadly.
"Enough builders have been employed so far, but the situation is very nearly an industry-wide shortage," AL quotes Sami Pakarinen from the Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries (RT).
Retired managers have even been called back in to work during the slump. One reason the paper cites for the minor crisis is that site manager training programmes were shut down between 1997-2007; specialist construction management training is available once more, but may not bring about changes swiftly enough.
The Finnish Construction Trade Union reports in the AL piece that a construction industry boom began about a year ago, with international deals signed left and right. However, union unemployment in July was at a 16.3 percent high (in Kainuu), with a total of 5,161 paying members listed as out of work.
Statistics also show that the proportion of foreign workers has ceased increasing. Some five percent of the construction union's members, around 3,500 people, have emigrated from elsewhere – mainly Estonia, Russia and Poland. RT, however, estimates that there are a total of some 20,000 foreign employees working in Finland at the moment.
Oldest minted coin in Finland found
Finally, tabloid Ilta-Sanomat picked up some breaking archaeological news. A sugar beet farmer in Hattula was out in his field with a metal detector in June when his device picked up a unique piece of Finnish history.
The farmer's find was a silver coin from the 15th century, minted around the year 1410, the National Board of Antiquities estimates. That makes the coin the oldest ever found in the country, IS writes.
"About 20 units of currency have been found in Finland that are completely unlike others from the same periods," says Jani Oravisjärvi from the Coin Cabinet. "However, those also include unique bills from the 19th century."
The coin, which weighs 0.7 grammes, would not have been especially valuable in its day, during Sweden's rule. The National Museum is loath to assign a euro value to the silver piece of the past, IS writes, and in fact has no chart or guidelines in place for the valuation of ancient artefacts.
