Salary that supports a Finnish permit: collective agreement and income requirement

In Finland the salary has to pass two separate tests. The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) checks the income requirement, which for 2026 is 1,210 euros net per month in the capital region. The salary must also be appropriate for the work, meaning it must follow the applicable collective agreement. Clearing one test does not substitute for the other.

The income requirement in euros

The 2026 figures published by Migri at migri.fi/en/income-requirement are graded by the municipality where the worker lives. The amounts are net income, the sum left after tax. Employers should work backwards from these figures to a gross salary, because a gross figure that looks comfortable on the employment contract can still fall short once tax is deducted.

The grading follows housing costs, and the figure that decides the case is the municipality where the worker actually lives, not where the company is registered. Warehouse work based in Espoo is assessed at the highest level even if the employer's registered address is in Kuopio. This detail derails applications regularly, because the place of work written into the employment contract and the address given in the application do not agree. Migri reads the file as a whole, and a contradiction between those two entries produces a request for further information that adds weeks.

Part time work is the second recurring problem. The income requirement applies to the income earned from the employment that the permit is based on. Twenty five hours a week at the collective agreement minimum hourly rate can land below 1,210 euros net, so the permit fails the requirement even though the hourly rate itself is entirely lawful. Multiply weekly hours by the hourly rate first, then look at the pay level.

The collective agreement is a second, separate test

Migri states at migri.fi/en/working-in-finland that the salary must be appropriate for the work. In practice that means the rate set by the applicable collective agreement. The Employment Contracts Act 55/2001 makes a generally applicable collective agreement binding even when the worker is a foreign national and the employer belongs to no employers' association. Being a foreign hire does not open a separate, cheaper pay scale.

Identifying the right agreement is the employer's job, and it is decided by the nature of the task rather than by the company's industry classification. A cleaner hired by a construction firm often falls under a different agreement than the bricklayer on the same site. The wrong agreement produces two consequences at once: the salary supporting the permit is measured against the wrong table, and a wage claim accrues in the employment relationship that must be paid retroactively with interest. The second does not disappear because the permit was granted.

Which agreement is generally applicable is not a matter of opinion either. The Board Confirming the General Applicability of Collective Agreements decides, under the Act on Confirming the General Applicability of Collective Agreements 56/2001, whether a national agreement is generally applicable, and both the confirmed agreements and the board's decisions are published on Finlex. An employer unsure which agreement governs a task can read the answer there before a salary goes into a contract, and the partner agency at the origin end can read the same page. Choosing the wrong agreement is therefore not an interpretation risk; it is a check that was not made.

A collective agreement governs more than the table rate. It usually carries experience supplements, shift supplements, Sunday compensation and holiday bonus. The base salary reported to Migri is a floor, not the whole package, and in a later inspection the occupational safety and health authority compares wages actually paid against the agreement in full. A gap between the reported and the paid salary is one of the most common inspection findings, covered in the post on foreign labour inspection.

Timeline and cost for the employer

The salary information is created before the application, not after it. The employer reports the terms of employment in Migri's Enter Finland for Employers service, and the worker files an application only after that. Under the procedure in the Aliens Act 301/2004 the labour authority issues a partial decision first, assessing the salary and the terms of employment, and Migri then decides the permit. The course of that procedure is described in the employed person permit and availability consideration.

The cost comes in two shapes. The application fee is fixed and small against the payroll figure. The real cost is raising the salary to the level that the collective agreement and the income requirement jointly demand, and that level has to be known before anything is promised to the worker. If the salary is corrected while the application is pending, the employment contract has to be reissued and the employer report updated, which sends the file back to the end of the queue.

The practical order is straightforward. Identify the collective agreement that applies to the task and the minimum rate it sets. Calculate what that gross salary means as net income in the municipality where the worker will live, and compare the result with Migri's table. Write the same figure into the employment contract and into the employer report. When those three documents agree, the salary element of the application stops producing requests for further information.

Salary is the part of the file that cannot be corrected later without moving the start date. It belongs in the same decision as the place of work and the accommodation arrangement, because the three affect each other. The relationship between rent and pay is covered separately in the post on accommodation for migrant workers.