News 14 Dec 2016

Finland under one cover – the Statistical Yearbook of Finland 2016 has been published

Correction. The news item has been corrected on 15 December 2016, the correction is indicated by bold font.

The newly published Statistical Yearbook of Finland 2016 describes in great detail Finnish society and its development over the past years and decades.

In addition to the latest data, this comprehensive volume of statistics contains long time series and regional data, as well as plenty of comparison data on other countries. The book is in Finnish, Swedish and English, and contains 603 pages and 618 tables. The Yearbook has been published since 1879.

Extracts from the Statistical Yearbook of Finland

  • At the end of 2015, Finland's population was 5,487,308. There were 2,701,490 men and 2,785,818 women. The population increased by more than 15,000 persons from the year before. The increase in population was mainly based on net immigration. Over the past five years, Finland’s population has grown by an average of 22,000 persons per year.
  • Last year, Finns moved 613,201 times within municipalities, which was 41,648 moves or seven per cent more than one year earlier. More moves were also made between municipalities, in total 280,484.
  • The most popular month to get married in 2015 was August when nearly 18 per cent of marriages were entered into. During the year, a total of 24,708 marriages were entered into. For three persons out of four the marriage was the first. The average age of women entering into their first marriage was 31.2 years and 33.4 years for men.
  • In all, 28,626 dwellings were completed in 2015 of which 41 per cent were built in Uusimaa. Next most dwellings were completed in Pirkanmaa and North Ostrobothnia, more than 2,000 dwellings in both. Over the past three years, construction of detached houses has contracted in particular. Annually, fewer than 10,000 of such dwellings have been completed.
  • Last year, a total of 2,175 new free-time residences were completed, which was one-third fewer than one year earlier. In total, there are half a million free-time residences in Finland, one-fifth of which are located in Varsinais-Suomi and Etelä-Savo. Finnish free-time residences are small in size, on average, 48 square metres.
  • At the beginning of 2016, there were 77,989 km of roads maintained by the Finnish Transport Agency, of this only 881 km were motorways and 102 km semi-motorways. Thirty-five per cent of the road network were gravel roads.
  • Last year, there were 8.7 million cinema visits, which is 1.6 visits per inhabitant. There were 170 cinemas in the whole country with 311 cinema halls and 48,000 seats. There were 202 premieres. One-fifth of them were produced in Finland.
  • Last year, there were 4,251 organic farms, that is farms that are in the scope of the monitoring system of organic production, in Finland. The share of organic farms among all farms was 8.3 per cent and close on ten per cent of all arable land was being organically farmed. The average arable land area of an organic farm was 52.8 hectares per farm.
  • Finland’s general government debt in 2015 was 63.1 per cent of the gross domestic product, which is below the average for the EU28. In Finland, the share of the debt had grown by 3.8 percentage points from the previous year. Greece had the most debt, 176.9 per cent and Estonia had the least debt, 9.7 per cent of GDP. In Finland, the general government deficit was -2.7 per cent of the gross domestic product, which was close to the average for the EU28.

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Finland 2016. Statistics Finland. Price EUR 80 (incl. VAT).
The publication can be ordered from the customer service of Edita Publishing Oy, tel. +358 20 450 05 or from
Edita's NetMarket online store.
The Yearbook can also be downloaded in PDF format at tilastokeskus.fi/vuosikirja2016.

Further information: Information Service Planner Sirkku Hiltunen +358 29 551 6373