Americans are growing increasingly unhappy with the country’s economy, its shrinking job opportunities, and its unaffordable housing market, according to recent polls—and a rising number of them are deciding to leave the nation.
Last year, more people left the U.S. than arrived, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution, marking the first time in 90 years the country recorded negative net migration. Net migration is expected to be negative this year as well, based on the Washington-based nonprofit’s predictions.
Some of those turning their back on the U.S. are looking for the kind of joy and success they feel they cannot find back home in “the happiest country in the world”—Finland. Newsweek spoke with two of them, Jeff, who moved there in 2021, and chose to go by his first name only, and Jordan Blake Banks, who moved there in 2019.
How Does The U.S. Compare to Finland: Size, Policy & Climate?
The Scandinavian country, a member of the European Union, took the number one spot in the 2026 World Happiness Report in March for the ninth consecutive year, scoring highly for social support, good education and healthcare, stability, and safety.
The U.S., on the other hand, ranked 23rd, continuing the country’s long-term decline as life satisfaction among young Americans plunged.
Finland covers roughly 131,000 square miles, making it nearly the same size as New Mexico. By population, Finland’s about 5.6 million residents put it closest to U.S. states such as Minnesota, Colorado, or Wisconsin.
What distinguishes Finland is that it combines state‑level scale with national‑level policymaking, meaning services like education, healthcare, and social insurance are coordinated uniformly rather than varying widely by region. The country operates a universal healthcare system, offers tuition‑free public education through university, and maintains an expansive social safety net that includes paid parental leave, unemployment protections, and child benefits.
Finland’s climate most closely resembles that of the northern Midwest, particularly Minnesota, though Finland is generally cooler and darker in winter. Much of Finland has a humid continental to subarctic climate, with long, cold winters and short, mild summers. In southern Finland, including Helsinki, winter highs typically hover between 25 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, similar to winter temperatures in northern Minnesota or Wisconsin, while summer highs usually reach the mid‑60s to low‑70s, comparable to a mild upper‑Midwest summer. Snow cover lasts three to four months in southern Finland and much longer in the north — roughly in line with or slightly longer than snow seasons in northern U.S. states.
Where Finland differs most from even the coldest U.S. states is daylight.
Because Finland sits far north — between 60° and 70° latitude — winter days are dramatically shorter than anywhere in the contiguous U.S., with parts of northern Finland experiencing weeks of near‑total darkness and southern areas receiving only a few hours of daylight in midwinter.
In summer, the opposite is true: Finland experiences extremely long days, including the midnight sun in northern regions, far exceeding summer daylight in states like Minnesota or Michigan. Alaska is the only U.S. state with similar daylight extremes, but temperatures there are typically colder than in much of Finland, which is moderated somewhat by Atlantic ocean currents.
Taking the (Cold) Plunge
Jeff, who works in tech and chose to keep his last name anonymous, moved to Helsinki, Finland’s capital, with his family in the summer of 2021, though he had never even visited the country before.
He grew up in Seattle and lived there most of his life before moving to Chicago for a while, he told Newsweek. He liked both places, but by the time he was living in Portland, Oregon, the U.S. was starting to feel less and less like the place he wanted to be and raise his family in.
It was mostly because of the forest fires gripping the state in 2021, which burned over 800,000 acres and set records for unhealthy air quality that year.
“The sky turned orange, and I just said, ‘This is too much,” Jeff said. “There’s all sorts of social disruption [in the U.S.], and our kids started school which meant they had to do the whole, ‘Let’s hide like somebody has a gun outside the door’, and we were just like, ‘This isn’t how we want to raise our kids.”
It was the right time to move, Jeff said. His children were young enough to integrate smoothly into the new country. He was sure he could find a job that would allow him to be there. But where to go?
Jeff and his partner started looking at potential new homes, prioritizing child welfare and skimming options based on criteria for finding a place where the family could fit in and be happy long term.
Finland ranks very high in terms of human welfare and child welfare, it has a highly regarded education system, and a high-functioning, stable government, so it fitted the bill perfectly. And it has some beautiful forests to match the ones in the Pacific Northwest.
“We had to do all the paperwork, which is intimidating the first time you do it. But if you have a job—and that’s a big if—it’s pretty easy,” Jeff said.
“We had to convince our kids, talk to our families, start offloading some of the big stuff that didn’t make sense to move, get all the ducks in a row and then off we went.”
Jordan Blake Banks also spoke to Newsweek about leaving the U.S. for Finland, saying she moved there in 2019 and has since earned a Master’s degree, married a Finn, become a Finnish citizen, and gotten a dog.
Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, she went to the University of Illinois to study agricultural and biological engineering. In her sophomore year, she spent a semester in Spain, which opened her eyes to the possibility of continuing her education outside the U.S.
After graduating, she moved to Finland for a Master’s in energy technology. “I was excited to go and see something different,” she told Newsweek.
“I didn’t really know that much about Finland, besides what I had read before coming, of course. But I knew that I wanted kind of a different culture,” she said.
Did They Find Finland’s Famed Happiness?
Finland might have consistently been named the world’s happiest country, but those living there talk of being “content” instead.
“Finland is not the happiest country in the world by most people’s definition of happiness, but it is, I would say, sort of the least miserable or the most contented country in the world,” Jeff said.
“Finns have very reasonable expectations about life, and Finnish society provides a fantastic sort of basic level of existence for everybody,” he added.
A big difference is made by the lack of what Jeff calls “background noise,” the things in one’s life that sort of distract them or give them anxiety, leading people further away from that idea of “peace” they often reach while on vacation.
“In Finland, the ways you lose peace are very, very limited. People are quiet, they’re respectful. It’s a very safe, trusting society,” Jeff said.
“There’s a social welfare system so you don’t end up having your life completely ruined by misfortune. And things just work, there is this sort of baseline, and then you get to decide what you make of the rest of your life, how you build on top of that.”
In the U.S., this kind of background noise and anxiety is much higher, he said, “for a whole bunch of reasons” ranging from road rage to gun violence.
“Overall, it’s not necessarily about being happy, but having kind of a safer society to live in, which definitely comes from there being support from the government,” Blake Banks agrees.
“Of course, there are different types of support for people that aren’t in great situations in the U.S., but I think it’s much more difficult to survive if you’re poor in the U.S. than if you’re in Finland,” she said.
“There aren’t as big wealth gaps between people as well in Finland,” she added.
Jeff misses his family, who stayed in the U.S., the country’s geographic diversity, and Washington’s peaches, Jeff said, but “that’s sort of a trade-off I’m willing to make.”
Jeff and his family plan to stay in Finland forever. But he admits the country is not for everyone. Finland can be a lonely place, he said. “If you’re looking for people to say ‘Howdy, neighbor,’ and make chit chat, you’re gonna be really disappointed,” he said.
“People generally don’t say hi to strangers here; you don’t greet people.”
Immigrating without a job, he added, is “foolish,” and the country’s government makes it hard. Having a job allows Americans to apply for a work-based residence permit in the country; without that, U.S. nationals can stay in the country for up to 90 days only within a 180-day period.
A big caveat to moving to Finland is that the country currently has the highest unemployment rate in Europe. Blake Banks is also unemployed at the moment after working three years in sustainability consulting.
“I think it’s really difficult, especially for young people now without much experience, to find jobs,” she said. “Of course, I don’t believe the bad unemployment situation will last forever. But at the exact moment that we’re in, I think it’s quite difficult in Finland.”
Things are a little easier if you work in sectors that Finland is trying to excel in—including deep tech. Work in Finland, a unit of Business Finland, works with Finnish and foreign companies located in Finland to help them attract and recruit deep tech engineers and postdoctoral researchers from all over the world, including the U.S.
“Our job is to make people aware of Finland as a career destination and in that way support companies in the competition for talents,” Laura Lindeman, Senior Director and Head of Work in Finland, told Newsweek.
“We don’t do actual matchmaking, because that’s part of recruitment,” she explained. On its website, Work in Finland lists jobs that are available for non-Finnish or Swedish speakers, and then its staff guides talents to look for those and apply directly.
Work in Finland is able to offer a fast-track permit for specialists, start-up founders and their family members. “Immigration Services is responsible, we cooperate in promoting that fast-track for our target groups,” Lindeman said. “And that process lasts an average nine days at the moment.”
Blake Banks is planning on returning to the U.S., though “most likely not in the current administration.” She and her wife would like to move to the U.S. “eventually” to be closer to Blake Banks’ family, “but we don’t see that happening anytime in the next few years,” she said.