Every fourth programming company to hire new workforce

Companies within the programming industry have a much more optimistic outlook into their future than other small and medium businesses in Finland. One fourth of all companies in the programming industry are planning to recruit more workforce within next year. Only one company out of a hundred considered there to be a need for reducing personnel. The information was recovered in a survey directed to SMBs. The survey was commissioned by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy in Finland.

The views within the programming industry deviate clearly from others in the SMB sector. For instance, from all the surveyed SMBs approximately 10 per cent were planning to dismiss some of their employees within the coming year.  

According to the survey the recession doesn’t affect programming industry as it does some other sectors. Companies in the programming industry plan to invest and spend money on product development more than other companies. At the same time the programming industry maintains its high faith in its profession and the likelihood of programming companies to survive the hardships of the recession is much higher than many other companies.

The positive outlook is justified for instance with the fact that during economically challenging times companies invest more in strengthening their own operations. One way to do this is to increase the use of information technology in the production process, which then employs more programming professionals.   

In the end of 2007 the programming industry had over 43 000 employees in approximately 5400 offices. The turnover within the industry was on average 1 156 000 Euros per office. Proportioned to the number of personnel the turnover of the programming industry was over 143 000 per employee.