The coronavirus crisis has had a major negative impact on many service industries including passenger transportation, tourism, the events industry and the personal services sector.
According to the Service Sector Employers' group (Palta), the effects of the crisis will expand to other sectors as well. Palta is an advocacy group for service sector companies and communities.
Palta said that in coming months, the knock-on effects of the crisis will be seen across many new sectors, including industrial services, maintenance and installation, architectural and engineering, freight transport, human resources as well as the research and development industries.
Most job losses "yet to come"
"More than 150,000 Finns work in service jobs related to industry and construction. The effects of the coronavirus epidemic have not yet strongly spread to these sectors, but the outlook for coming months is worrying," Palta economist Lahti Vuori said in a statement issued Wednesday.
"According to our estimates, a total of nearly 10,000 jobs will be lost from these sectors this year and the largest share of this decline is yet to come," he continued.
The economist added that sales within the corporate and expert services sectors will remain weak for the rest of the year and that the recovery within the administrative and support services sector would continue to be gradual.
The private services sector employs about one million people in Finland, comprising more than half of the country's private sector.