Lack of competent labour may endanger forest work in Finland. Lumber jacks’ average age is circa 50 years and there are not enough young people coming.
Many forest owners themselves work in their forests, but they are also getting older. Many instances endeavour to get young people interested in forest work and specific means are sought to get more active participation.

Forest management associations, in co-operation with employment authorities, have arranged training courses of three to four weeks for unemployed lumberjacks. They have been given supplementary job training and they have been promised work at the end of their course.
In some places local one day courses have been arranged for women in handling cleaning and trimming chainsaws for the purpose of making them interested in self-employment. The response has been positive. The training that started last year will be continued in 2005. Experienced lumberjacks have acted as teachers at these courses. Some forest management associations have good experiences from employing their own permanent lumberjack-teachers.
A privately financed fund has been established for improving the esteem of wood harvesting. The sponsor of the project is Mr Einari Vidgren, founder of the forest machine producing company Ponsse Plc. The fund will be named after him.
Among other activities, the fund will grant scholarships to students. It will also support research and improvement of working methods in forestry. The fund’s founder hopes that more young people will seek jobs as forest machine operators. The annual number of graduated operators cover only circa 80 per cent of the need for workers.