Nurse take-home pay in Finland after tax, 2026

Nursing pay from P25 through to P90

These numbers come from the 2026 KVTES scales, Tehy wage surveys and data published by the larger wellbeing services counties including HUS, Pirkanmaa and Varsinais-Suomi. The spread is narrower than in most professions because the agreement fixes both floor and ceiling, while private employers such as Terveystalo and Mehiläinen typically pay 3% to 8% above the KVTES minimum to attract staff through the shortage.

KVTES, and how a starting salary is arrived at

Hospital and municipal nurses work under KVTES, which sorts pay into palkkahinnoittelukohta grade groups. A registered sairaanhoitaja holding a bachelor's degree from an ammattikorkeakoulu falls into 04HOI030 at sub-grade B19, where the 2026 minimum is roughly €2,680 a month, or €32,160 a year, before any experience supplement.

Experience supplements (kokemuslisä) are added automatically based on years of relevant service:

Above the experience supplement sit specialty premiums, the erityisala or vaativuuslisä, paid in intensive care, theatres, psychiatry and emergency medicine, and worth €2,000 to €4,000 a year. An intensive care nurse at HUS combining sixteen years of experience supplement with a specialty premium reaches €41,000 to €44,000 gross, close to P75 before a single shift allowance is counted.

The median €38,500, deduction by deduction

At median earnings the Finnish system treats people considerably better than it does higher up, because the ansiotulovähennys earned income deduction and the työtulovähennys work income credit between them cut the effective municipal and state burden substantially.

That effective 25.5% at the nursing median sits well below the roughly 40% a software engineer on €65,000 pays, and the gap is deliberate. The deduction machinery is tuned for middle incomes, with the ansiotulovähennys peaking somewhere between €30,000 and €45,000 before tapering away. Nurses are exactly who that design was built for.

Shift and night allowances, and how they are taxed

Hardly any Finnish nurse works only weekday daytime hours. Most hospital agreements carry epämukavan ajan korvaukset, allowances for inconvenient hours that add real money to base pay:

Working a full rotating pattern with regular nights and some Sundays realistically adds €3,000 to €5,500 of allowances to annual gross, carrying total compensation past the base figures quoted. One caveat matters: every allowance is taxed as earned income at your marginal rate, with no reduced band available. Push total annual income past €45,901 and the excess meets 21.4% state tax rather than 17%.

What the nursing shortage is doing to pay

The wellbeing services counties have admitted openly that they cannot find enough registered nurses, above all for intensive care, surgery and psychiatry. Tehy took substantial industrial action across 2022 and 2023, which ended with the government agreeing to an accelerated KVTES increase path. Part of that has now arrived: by 2026 base minimums stand roughly 8% higher in real terms than before 2022.

More visibly, recruitment bonuses have appeared across the larger hospital districts. HUS, Pirkanmaa and Pohjois-Pohjanmaa have each offered one-off rekrytointipalkkio payments of €1,000 to €3,500 for nurses committing to twelve to twenty-four months in priority specialties. They are taxed as earned income and still represent genuine extra pay that no KVTES figure shows. On the private side, Terveystalo and Mehiläinen have used muuttokorvaus relocation allowances worth up to €2,000 to move nurses into regions where shortages are worst.

Finnish, Luxembourgish and German nurses compared

Comparing nursing across borders actually tells you something, since collective agreements set the salary in all three countries while the social systems sitting behind those salaries differ enormously.

Frequently asked questions