Professional development opportunities and a newly built daycare center: incentives in ECEC teacher job advertisements in Finland

Attracting and recruiting qualified, high-quality teachers is a global challenge. In Finland, the recruitment of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teachers has been particularly problematic, especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area. This paper investigates the incentives used in job advertisements to attract ECEC teachers in Finland and the differences in incentives between urban, semi-urban, and rural municipalities. The analysis of 322 ECEC teacher job advertisements revealed that the most frequently highlighted incentives were related to professional development opportunities and physical work environment. Urban municipalities featured more incentives compared to their semi-urban and rural counterparts, reflecting the observation that, unlike many other parts of the world, the teacher recruitment challenge in Finland is most acute in urban areas. This study contributes to the limited research on teacher recruitment and enhances the understanding of incentives used in recruitment beyond financial ones.