Business Tendency Survey: Recovery is slow – outlooks slightly more cautious again
According to the April Business Tendency Survey of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), business conditions improved slightly for Finnish companies during the first months of the year, as expected in the previous survey. Companies in all the main sectors described the current economic conditions as somewhat weaker than average. Production and sales have increased, but the number of employees continued to decrease slightly.
Expectations for the coming months have become more cautious again, with very little confidence that there will be a general strengthening of the outlook. The outlook for Finnish businesses as a whole has declined and is now just in the negative. Many companies are experiencing sluggish demand and production volumes are not expected to change. The labour force is fairly stable in manufacturing and the service sector, but a further slight decline is expected in construction.
“There was a welcome slow recovery in the outlook for Finnish businesses in the early part of the year, although the situation in many sectors is still difficult. There has been no strong return to growth, however, and expectations for the future have become slightly more cautious again in the uncertain economic environment,” says Penna Urrila, Chief Economist and Director at EK, the Confederation of Finnish Industries.
In manufacturing, production began to grow in the early part of the year. Production volumes are not expected to grow in the second quarter, but there are cautious expectations that there will be a revival in growth towards the end of the summer. Of the main sectors, the situation is clearly the weakest in construction. The decline in production is forecast to ease, however, and the trend could level off in late summer.
“The uncertainty in the global economy is reflected in the outlook for Finnish businesses. In services, expectations have remained fairly stable, but the growth in production seen in manufacturing is expected to pause in the coming months. In construction the situation is still very weak, but the cyclical downturn is coming to an end,” Urrila says.
The sluggishness of the economic cycle is also evident in the fact that 54% of respondents in all sectors said that demand is weak. At the same time, the shortage of skilled labour became slightly more widespread, with 12% of enterprises now having trouble finding suitable labour.
EK Business Tendency Survey
The Business Tendency Survey is published four times a year by the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK). The survey has been carried out regularly since 1966. It is part of the European Commission’s Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys, which is partially funded by the EU. The survey concerns activity in Finland. In April 2025, the Confederation of Finnish Industries asked businesses to evaluate their business outlook for the first quarter of 2025 and their expectations for the coming months. A total of 1,135 companies employing about 275,000 people in Finland responded to the survey.
