The Economics of the Health and Social Care Workforce

The Health Economics Research Group at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), in collaboration with the Finnish Society for Health Economics and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, is pleased to announce a two-day lecture course:

The Economics of the Health and Social Care Workforce
October 1–2, 2025 | Tieteiden talo, Helsinki | Hybrid Event

The course will be lectured by Professor Emeritus Robert Elliott (University of Aberdeen, UK), who is one of the leading experts in the field.

Course content

This course will introduce participants to the economic theories essential for understanding the behaviour of individuals and institutions within health and social care labour markets. It will also explore how these theories apply across the diverse institutional arrangements that deliver health and social care in the Nordic countries. The course will detail

• Labour Supply: the economic framework for understanding the supply of labour in health and social care, including the characteristics of jobs and the motivation of people to seek jobs in this sector.
• Labour Demand: the drivers of the demand for labour and explore the technical, clinical and institutional structures that shape this demand, and methods for valuing the contribution of labour in the many different production processes in health and social care.
• Labour Market Equilibrium: the concept of labour market equilibrium, identify the data required to study this balance, and discuss the role of pay in securing equilibrium and the appropriate methods for paying health and social care workers.
• Workforce Challenges: key issues in recruitment and retention, the importance of local labour markets, geographical workforce distribution, investment in training and pay for each on the main occupations within health and social care.

The course is designed to motivate research into these issues and, through discussion, to identify the data and funding required to undertake the research, and any barriers to this. 

The course is intended for researchers and policy makers in the field of health and social care. It will provide a non-technical introduction to concepts and examples. Collaborative sessions bringing together researchers and policy makers facilitates identification of policy-relevant research areas. No previous knowledge of labour economics is required. 

Programme

Participation

This is a free-of-charge hybrid event. While remote participation is available, in-person attendance is strongly encouraged to take full advantage of the interactive discussions and networking opportunities. Both remote participation and in-person attendance will hold interactive sessions and group work.

There are 60 seats available for in-person participants, and registration is binding. If you are unable to attend after registering, please notify the organizers via registration link as soon as possible. The seminar will take place at Tieteiden talo, Kirkkokatu 6, 00170 Helsinki. Participants are kindly asked to cover their own travel, lunch, and coffee expenses during the course days.

Registration is closed.

Course leader   

Professor Robert Elliott is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Aberdeen. He was Director of the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU) between 2001 and 2012 and Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics prior to that. He has been a Visiting Professor at the universities of Cornell, IUPUI, New York, Stanford and Wisconsin in the USA, Queensland and Melbourne in Australia, Gdansk in Poland, Cattolica in Milan and Patheon-Assas in Paris where he has undertaken research and taught graduate and undergraduate classes. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and from 2007 to 2015 served as an Independent Commissioner on the Low Pay Commission which sets the UK minimum wage. He is author of several books in the fields of labour and health economics and of articles in leading economic and health economics journals. He has been a consultant and adviser to various organizations, including HM Treasury, the European Commission, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). His book the ‘Economics of the UK Health and Social Care Labour Market’ was published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Contact information

Course organizers, c/o Tuuli Suomela, University of Eastern Finland, tuuli.suomela(at)uef.fi