Marginal areas are often lumped together as one entity in public discus­ sions of the vicious circle that results from a fall in the number of jobs and active population in certain areas. Marginality as such is a controversial concept which difficult to define (Leimgruber 1993). It is taken here to ap­ ply to local government districts (municipalities) with a fairly small popu­ lation and located far away from the major central areas of Finland. Discus­ sions of this problem at the national level have for a long time been based on the opposition between the declining regions of Eastern and Northern Finland and the developing regions of Southern Finland and the coast. Monitoring of unemployment, which was the major topic that attracted at­ tention in the recession years of the 1990s, has revealed regional and local differentiation even between rural areas, however, of a kind that cannot be explained by ‘traditional’ ways of thinking.