€1,600/mo

employed person’s permit (TTOL)

€3,937/mo

specialist and EU Blue Card

14 days

fast-track target

€220

fee gap between TTOL and specialist

Thresholds and fees by permit type

Every permit type has its own minimum gross salary, reviewed annually. The threshold is not a target but the lowest acceptable pay: below it the application is refused, however good the job.

The employed person’s permit is the only one costing €750. The difference is explained by the partial decision from the Employment Office — labour-market testing, in which the authority assesses whether workers for the job are already available in Finland or the EU. It is a separate processing stage, and it costs both money and time.

Two routes to the same job

Many expert roles satisfy the conditions for both the employed person’s permit and the specialist permit, which makes the choice a real one. The specialist route usually requires a higher-education degree and expert-level work, but if the salary exceeds €3,937 it is almost always the better option.

• ·The permit is cheaper: €530 against €750 when filed electronically.
• ·Processing is faster: a fourteen-day target against the ordinary processing time.
• ·No labour-market testing, so the decision does not depend on worker availability in Finland.
• ·The fast track covers family members too, so the whole family gets decisions at the same pace.
• ·Changing employer is more flexible for a specialist than under a permit granted through labour-market testing.

The flip side is that the €3,937 threshold is absolute. If the employer offers €3,800, the specialist route is unavailable altogether and only the employed person’s permit remains, labour-market testing included. A hundred euros a month can therefore be cheaper for the employer than two extra months of waiting.

The collective agreement on top of the threshold

Migri’s threshold is a minimum condition, not the only one. The salary must also match the sector’s collective agreement where one is in force. In many sectors the agreed pay is clearly above Migri’s threshold, in which case the collective agreement is the figure that decides, not the immigration rules.

Where a sector has no collective agreement, the pay must be customary and reasonable. In practice Migri compares it with pay levels in equivalent roles. Underpayment is grounds for refusal and can later block an extended permit.

What the threshold leaves in hand

A threshold is a gross figure, and what it means in daily life only becomes clear after tax. A specialist’s minimum salary of €3,937 leaves about €2,961 a month in hand in Helsinki, an effective total burden of 24.79 per cent.

The employed person’s minimum of €1,600 leaves about €1,448 in hand, an effective burden of only 9.50 per cent — the earned-income and basic deductions cover most of the tax at low pay. The net gap between the two levels is €1,513 a month, even though the gross gap is €2,337.

Family and extended permits

Someone holding a work-based residence permit can apply for family reunification, and a separate income requirement then applies, calculated by family size. It is a different thing from your own salary threshold, and it is typically higher than people expect.

A work-based permit is normally granted for the duration of the employment and no longer than a set period. An extended permit is applied for before the current one expires, and the work and salary are checked against the conditions again. If the threshold has risen in the meantime, the extended permit is assessed against the threshold at the time of application — which particularly catches out those whose pay sits right on the line.