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1000 lose jobs as IT companies leave Oulu

Unemployment among Oulu technology developers will surge as companies leave town.

One of the youngest and most dynamic cities in the Barents Region is about to lose some of its best innovators.

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Oulu, the north Finnish technology and university city, faces a possible wave of unemployment among its IT experts as two companies say they will wrap up their local business.

Among the companies is Microsoft which says it will close its research and development centre, consequently dismissing 500 people. In addition, Broadcom, a US. wireless modem company, says 430 will lose their jobs as its seizes its activities, Yle reports. 

The dismissals could put a crack in the city’s future as Finnish IT develpment hub. Oulu has over the last decades attracted world leading experts and its university has become a top technology development center

As previously reported, Oulu today has the youngest and quickest growing population in the whole Barents Region. It also has a high level of educated inhabitants. Figures from Patchwork Barents show that 27 percent of the population has university and college degrees. Only the two other main university regions can match that, the Västerbotten county in Sweden and Troms in Norway.