PUBLISHED May 28, 2026
The Revenue Base: 103 Billion Euros, Growing
According to “Talousnäkymät 2/2026 — Teknologiateollisuuden talousnäkymät”, published by Teknologiateollisuus ry on 6 May 2026, the Finnish technology industry’s total revenue in Finland grew by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2025, reaching approximately 103 billion euros. That growth was unevenly distributed across the sector’s five main sub-industries. Revenue rose in electronics and electrical engineering, information technology, and planning and consulting. It fell in machinery and metal products — the sector’s largest sub-industry by far — and in metals processing.
The 2025 revenue figure establishes an important baseline: Finland’s technology industry is a sector of very significant scale, representing a substantial share of the country’s private sector output. Its performance is consequently not merely an industrial story — it is a macroeconomic one. When machinery and metals are struggling, Finnish GDP and employment feel it; when they recover, so does the broader economy.
Orders in Q1 2026: Acceptable Given the Circumstances
New orders in the Finnish technology industry fell by 23 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the previous quarter. That sounds alarming until the context is supplied: the fourth quarter of 2025 was exceptionally strong, boosted by unusually large maritime industry orders that inflated the baseline. Compared to the same quarter of 2025, new orders were 11 percent higher — a genuinely positive year-on-year comparison.
The order backlog tells a similarly encouraging story. At the end of March 2026, the total backlog was 2 percent lower than at year-end 2025, but 18 percent higher than at the same point in 2025. That 18 percent year-on-year increase is a significant number — it implies that the sector entered 2026 with more work in the pipeline than it had a year earlier, providing a buffer against near-term demand uncertainty.
Technology Industries of Finland describes the Q1 order intake as “acceptable.” That is a characteristically Finnish understatement. In the context of an exceptionally strong comparison quarter, ongoing global uncertainty, and an Iran War that broke out just as the quarter was closing, an 11 percent year-on-year increase in new orders is a genuinely solid result.
The Enquiry Signal: Highest Since January 2022
One of the most instructive data points in the May report concerns the enquiry balance index — a measure of whether companies are receiving more or fewer requests for quotations compared to three months earlier. In April 2026, this index stood at 14. It has not been this high since January 2022.
The significance of this figure is real but requires careful interpretation. A high enquiry balance indicates market interest and potential pipeline — customers are actively exploring purchases. But the report itself notes a pattern that has been consistent throughout the past year: enquiries are arriving, but final purchase decisions are lagging. Customers are interested but not committing. The general uncertainty of the environment — the Iran War, energy costs, interest rate outlook — is causing procurement decision-makers at customer companies to extend their evaluation and approval processes. Need exists; willingness to commit to spending does not yet fully match it.
This gap between enquiry activity and order conversion is the central operational challenge for Finnish technology industry sales teams in 2026. It creates a pipeline that looks healthy on paper but has not yet translated into the revenue growth that the level of market interest would normally imply.
The composition of the order backlog improvement is important for understanding where Finnish technology industry strength is actually located. The fourth quarter of 2025 was marked by exceptionally large maritime industry orders — and while shipbuilding order intake was smaller in Q1 2026 than in that unusually strong quarter, it remained significant in absolute terms. Finland’s maritime industry — shipyards and their supply chains — is a globally competitive segment that has benefited from strong demand for icebreakers, offshore vessels, and specialist ships.
Defence industry and its supply chains are the other engine of recent backlog growth. The report explicitly links the strengthening of order books in machinery and metal products to both shipyard activity and defence industry demand. Finnish defence companies and their suppliers are benefiting from the same structural rearmament trend that is driving order growth in Norway, Sweden, and across NATO’s European members — a structural shift that will sustain demand in this segment for years regardless of what happens to the broader cyclical environment.
The remaining segments — electronics and electrical engineering, planning and consulting, information technology — are more exposed to general domestic and European investment cycles, and their recovery has been more gradual and uneven.
The composition of the order backlog improvement is important for understanding where Finnish technology industry strength is actually located. The fourth quarter of 2025 was marked by exceptionally large maritime industry orders — and while shipbuilding order intake was smaller in Q1 2026 than in that unusually strong quarter, it remained significant in absolute terms. Finland’s maritime industry — shipyards and their supply chains — is a globally competitive segment that has benefited from strong demand for icebreakers, offshore vessels, and specialist ships.
Defence industry and its supply chains are the other engine of recent backlog growth. The report explicitly links the strengthening of order books in machinery and metal products to both shipyard activity and defence industry demand. Finnish defence companies and their suppliers are benefiting from the same structural rearmament trend that is driving order growth in Norway, Sweden, and across NATO’s European members — a structural shift that will sustain demand in this segment for years regardless of what happens to the broader cyclical environment.
The remaining segments — electronics and electrical engineering, planning and consulting, information technology — are more exposed to general domestic and European investment cycles, and their recovery has been more gradual and uneven.
Finnish technology industry employment stood at approximately 329,000 at the end of March 2026 — unchanged from the end of December 2025. The flat headline number conceals some movement beneath it. Employment in the service sectors — planning and consulting, and information technology — continued to decline in Q1 2026, reflecting the weaker business cycle in those segments. In manufacturing — particularly in machinery and metal products, the sector’s largest sub-industry — employment appears to have turned modestly upward, as strengthening order books in shipbuilding and defence begin to require additional headcount.
The layoff figure deserves attention. At the end of March 2026, approximately 10,800 workers remained subject to temporary layoff arrangements — essentially unchanged from the year-end 2025 figure. This number reflects companies that are maintaining headcount on paper while managing through weak periods by temporarily reducing working hours or suspending workers on government-supported layoff schemes, rather than making permanent redundancies. The stability of this figure — neither recovering toward zero nor deteriorating — is consistent with a sector in a holding pattern, waiting for the demand environment to clarify before making definitive employment decisions in either direction.
New recruitment activity in Q1 2026 was 8,200 across the entire technology industry — up from the end of 2025, but still described as low by long-run historical standards. The increase reflects confidence at the margin, not the beginning of a structural hiring wave.
A theme that runs through the Technology Industries of Finland report with particular insistence concerns the interest rate sensitivity of the sector’s customer base. Finnish technology industry is, by its own characterisation, an investment goods producer: it makes machines, systems, and equipment for sectors including mining, forest industry, energy, and construction. The purchasing decisions of its customers are fundamentally capital investment decisions — and capital investment decisions are acutely sensitive to the cost and availability of financing.
Higher interest rates — or even the credible expectation of higher rates — cause customer companies to defer investment decisions. The machinery sits approved in the project pipeline; the final order is not placed because the financing cost calculations no longer make the project viable, or because the CFO has instructed the procurement team to wait three months for the rate outlook to clarify. This mechanism is not theoretical in Finland’s case — it has been a dominant feature of the domestic market for the past two years as the ECB’s rate cycle played out.
The Iran War threatens to reinstate exactly this dynamic. If energy prices drive inflation above the ECB’s target and the Bank responds with rate increases, Finnish technology industry would face a renewed round of customer investment deferral at precisely the moment when its order pipeline is beginning to recover. The sector’s verdict, expressed directly in the report, is that central bank rate increases in the current environment would be toxic — damaging demand without addressing the underlying cause of inflation, which is an oil supply shock that no rate hike can cure.
Despite everything, the mood among Finnish technology industry companies in early 2026 is described as cautiously positive. Companies are not in panic. The Iran War has not yet caused widespread immediate disruption to the sector’s operations. The enquiry balance is at its best in four years. Order backlogs are substantially higher than a year ago. Recruitment is recovering from its worst levels. And the structural trends supporting shipbuilding and defence demand will not reverse quickly.
The report does not minimise the risks. If the war continues, every week that passes moves the situation toward the less favourable scenario. The rate risk is real. The demand conversion gap between enquiries and orders remains unresolved. And the IT and consulting segments — which had been among the sector’s most dynamic drivers through 2021 and 2022 — remain in a weak cyclical phase.
But the technology industry has lived through worse. Finland’s technology sector restructured after the Nokia era, rebuilt through the 2010s, and survived the pandemic with its manufacturing base largely intact. The May 2026 data shows an industry that is cautious, watchful, and aware of the risks — and that is, on balance, in a better position than it was twelve months ago.
Finnish technology industry employment stood at approximately 329,000 at the end of March 2026 — unchanged from the end of December 2025. The flat headline number conceals some movement beneath it. Employment in the service sectors — planning and consulting, and information technology — continued to decline in Q1 2026, reflecting the weaker business cycle in those segments. In manufacturing — particularly in machinery and metal products, the sector’s largest sub-industry — employment appears to have turned modestly upward, as strengthening order books in shipbuilding and defence begin to require additional headcount.
The layoff figure deserves attention. At the end of March 2026, approximately 10,800 workers remained subject to temporary layoff arrangements — essentially unchanged from the year-end 2025 figure. This number reflects companies that are maintaining headcount on paper while managing through weak periods by temporarily reducing working hours or suspending workers on government-supported layoff schemes, rather than making permanent redundancies. The stability of this figure — neither recovering toward zero nor deteriorating — is consistent with a sector in a holding pattern, waiting for the demand environment to clarify before making definitive employment decisions in either direction.
New recruitment activity in Q1 2026 was 8,200 across the entire technology industry — up from the end of 2025, but still described as low by long-run historical standards. The increase reflects confidence at the margin, not the beginning of a structural hiring wave.
A theme that runs through the Technology Industries of Finland report with particular insistence concerns the interest rate sensitivity of the sector’s customer base. Finnish technology industry is, by its own characterisation, an investment goods producer: it makes machines, systems, and equipment for sectors including mining, forest industry, energy, and construction. The purchasing decisions of its customers are fundamentally capital investment decisions — and capital investment decisions are acutely sensitive to the cost and availability of financing.
Higher interest rates — or even the credible expectation of higher rates — cause customer companies to defer investment decisions. The machinery sits approved in the project pipeline; the final order is not placed because the financing cost calculations no longer make the project viable, or because the CFO has instructed the procurement team to wait three months for the rate outlook to clarify. This mechanism is not theoretical in Finland’s case — it has been a dominant feature of the domestic market for the past two years as the ECB’s rate cycle played out.
The Iran War threatens to reinstate exactly this dynamic. If energy prices drive inflation above the ECB’s target and the Bank responds with rate increases, Finnish technology industry would face a renewed round of customer investment deferral at precisely the moment when its order pipeline is beginning to recover. The sector’s verdict, expressed directly in the report, is that central bank rate increases in the current environment would be toxic — damaging demand without addressing the underlying cause of inflation, which is an oil supply shock that no rate hike can cure.
Despite everything, the mood among Finnish technology industry companies in early 2026 is described as cautiously positive. Companies are not in panic. The Iran War has not yet caused widespread immediate disruption to the sector’s operations. The enquiry balance is at its best in four years. Order backlogs are substantially higher than a year ago. Recruitment is recovering from its worst levels. And the structural trends supporting shipbuilding and defence demand will not reverse quickly.
The report does not minimise the risks. If the war continues, every week that passes moves the situation toward the less favourable scenario. The rate risk is real. The demand conversion gap between enquiries and orders remains unresolved. And the IT and consulting segments — which had been among the sector’s most dynamic drivers through 2021 and 2022 — remain in a weak cyclical phase.
But the technology industry has lived through worse. Finland’s technology sector restructured after the Nokia era, rebuilt through the 2010s, and survived the pandemic with its manufacturing base largely intact. The May 2026 data shows an industry that is cautious, watchful, and aware of the risks — and that is, on balance, in a better position than it was twelve months ago.
