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Comment by jeffbarg | Hacker News Reader

The most shocking part of this to me is the last line:

"The City of Helsinki is Finland’s biggest employer with around 38,000 employees."

Is this common for governmental organizations to be such large employers? Even in Europe, this is surprising to me.

You have had some pretty good responses already. Few things adding to the number: Finnish municipalities often hire people with disabilities and pay them fraction of the pay a normal person would get.

Then more specific to Helsinki: city of Helsinki is notorious for inefficiency and shitloads of publicly funded feelgood projects. I've seen it from inside and the handouts that fund weird little art projects and museums that can't attract customers.. Shitshow.

Still there is relatively large amount of tax payers and relatively low municipal tax. Only because the comparison is municipalities where majority of the population is pensioners.

Finland has a national health care system where most health care workers work for the municipalities. Add to that teachers, social workers and that covers most of it.

The US Department of Defense is literally the biggest employer in the world.

38,000 for a capital city in a country with real health care, public schools and developed public services is not that much.

Yes, the federal government is the US’s largest employer.

I remember reading about the Japanese area with the highest quality of life - it was an area where the government was the largest employer. That article went on to say that the government essentially managed fishing for the area, coordinating supply and demand, and that was the biggest industry. So the arguments that "private ownership" and "free market" are always better are simply ideological beliefs.

Then there is the city in Germany which controls a bunch of public companies - starting with Zepplins. My understanding is that their wealth, jobs, and social programs are all essentially controlled by the local government using company profits (I don't know if the VW emission problems have changed that.)

I think so. 39,000 in Stockholm.

http://www.stockholm.se/OmStockholm/Forvaltningar-och-bolag/

NHS (Great Britain - state owned health provider) is on a track to reach 2mln employees.

Precious few of them nurses but there’s always room on the org chart for more middle managers.

Washington, DC, reports 36 thousand FTE for this fiscal year.

Interestingly, Portland is roughly the same size as Helsinki and Washington, DC, but only has 10,000 city employees from what I can find (1), although there is probably much more incoming traffic into DC or Helsinki on a given day than Portland, which would require more city upkeep.

(1) https://www.portlandoregon.gov/oehr/article/595121

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