Despite good cyclical and employment developments in recent years, the unemployment situation remains challenging in six cities. In 2017-2018, the unemployment rate has been decreasing in all six cities, but the challenge is that in 2018 about 30 per cent of unemployed job seekers in six cities were long-term unemployed, the total number of people co-financed by the municipality was 58,216 people and the share of labour market support financed by the municipality totalled just over EUR 172 million (Report 7/2018 by the Kuuusikko Working Group). The challenge for the public sector is to develop new solutions and approaches to make services for jobseekers in different situations easier and quicker and lead to different sustainable solutions more permanently. On the other hand, especially in growth centres, there is a simultaneous shortage of skilled labour and the availability of labour contributes to limiting the growth and development of enterprises. Businesses are also facing new challenges and need new solutions and services. In order to maintain competitiveness in the business world, new skills are needed and employees are required to continuously develop skills and learn new types of skills. The central objective of Prime Minister Marin’s government programme is to raise the employment rate to 75 % of the current 72.4 %. This is achieved, for example, by reforming employment services to support rapid re-employment and improving the availability, quality, effectiveness and diversity of services. In the reform of services, the role of municipalities in organising services will be strengthened. To this end, the six cities have presented the government with a broad employment experiment, which would test the overall transfer of responsibility for the organisation of employment-promoting services with the necessary special laws and resources to be transferred to the municipalities. (Letter from the Union of Municipalities and the TEM on 30 August 2019). The employment experiment is one of the biggest changes in the objectives of Prime Minister Marin’s government programme, which will make a significant contribution to the current employment policy and the consequent change in the sharing of responsibilities and costs between the state and the municipalities. The activities of the 6Aika Osaamo project utilise the new operating environment created by possible employment experiments in the development of services and support the achievement of the objectives set for the experiment in accordance with the Government Programme. The main objective of the project is to develop, streamline and diversify services and solutions aimed at increasing the employment rate proposed by the government, improving the efficiency of employment and training and finding new solutions to improve the availability of skilled labour. The project develops low-threshold employment and economic services in a network manner, in cooperation with the various actors in the regions, in order to find new operating models and solutions for job seekers, employers and other stakeholders to meet the challenges of skills development, solving mismatch problems and fragmented service provision. The project’s development work is carried out through five different work packages. The development work carried out in the work packages includes concrete services and customer work to promote the employment of targeted job seekers and to meet the recruitment and skills needs of companies. The project will create a national operating model based on a new type of cockpit model, which has been developed to take into account the different needs of the adult population in terms of employment, continuous learning, participation in employment-enhancing services and entrepreneurship, as well as the needs of employers in terms of the availability of skilled workforce and the development of business activities. The activities to be developed in the project will make use of employment ecosystems that have already been created or are developing at national level in different regions. The employment ecosystem includes urban actors, ELY Centres, TE Offices, KELA and their various cross-sectoral service structures, as well as regional educational institutions, third sector operators and enterprises. In the ecosystem, the services provided and maintained by cities include a variety of employment, education, business, social, health and leisure services, as well as advisory and information services. (Six councils’ contribution to the questions of the TEM, 2 September 2019). The project partners include the cities of Oulu, Helsinki, Vantaa, Turku and Tampere, as well as the Tampere Adult Education Centre, Tampere University of Applied Sciences Ltd and Laurea University of Applied Sciences Ltd. In addition, the City of Espoo participates in the project as an external benchmark partner, but does not have its own sub-project in the project package.