Salaried income in Finland grew by over five percent from January to October this year compared to the same period last year, according to figures published on Monday by the Tax Administration.
The figures show income register data broken down by municipality and revealed that wages went up in all six of Finland's largest cities during the reporting period.
The biggest rise in income was in Tampere, where residents saw an average increase of 7 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.
The next largest increase was in Oulu, where total wage income increased by 6.3 percent year-on-year. Among Finland's other main urban areas, wages were up 5.9 percent in Espoo, 5.5 percent in Helsinki, 5.4 percent in Turku and 4.3 percent in Vantaa.
"The increase is explained in particular by the start of the partial shutdown measures prompted by [the beginning of the] Covid crisis in the spring of the comparison year 2020, and their gradual easing this year," the Tax Administration explained in a press release.
The agency added that the new system of gathering data allows for the development of taxpayers' earned income to be monitored monthly. In the past, monitoring has only been possible on an annual basis.
"Thanks to the new statistics, municipal-specific and also parish-specific information on the development of earned income can now be found much more in real time, once a month. We hope that the municipalities and parishes will find the statistics and use them in financial planning and decision-making," the Tax Administration's Inspector General Matti Luokkanen said.
In addition to earned income, the monthly statistics also show pensions, unemployment benefits and other taxable social benefits.
"As the benefits and pensions paid have not been reported to the income register until the beginning of 2021, comparative information compared to the previous year will not be available until January 2022," Luokkanen explained.