Data on the educational and vocational structure of the population is used for purposes such as the monitoring of the educational level of the population and anticipation of labour and educational needs. Access to education can be observed by the socio-economic background of students.

The objective of anticipation is to produce data on the qualitative needs for education, based on long-term employment forecasts. Reports describing the educational structure enable the monitoring of development trends in the population's educational level.

Reports on the socio-economic background allow observation of the socio-economic background of students in vocational education and training, general upper secondary education and higher education by their parents' level of education, income and socio-economic status.

The statistics are based on data and registers collected by Statistics Finland.