Unlike in health and social services, the customers of TE services mainly consist of working-age population. For this reason, the municipality’s labour force (or, active population) is considered a better criterion for the municipalities’ responsibility to organise services than the whole population.
The labour force is the official definition of the employment statistics of Statistics Finland for persons aged between 15 and 74 who are actively available in the labour market. The labour force is divided into employed and unemployed people. Statistics Finland calculates and estimates the size of the labour force in each municipality and region annually. The data usually dates back one year.