Highest unemployment in ten years – except for the pandemic

Published 8 August 2024 at 09.41

Economics. Sweden is still in a recession and unemployment is the highest in ten years excluding the pandemic. Unemployment is particularly high among immigrants.

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The recession is judged to have bottomed out this year and a recovery in the economy is expected in the future. But unemployment remains high, especially among those born abroad.

Unemployment among people aged 15–74 is now at 8.3 percent, which is unchanged compared to the previous quarter, but an increase on an annual basis.< /p>

– More people must come to work. Outsiders and subsidy dependency need to be met with measures in many different areas. Everyone who is excluded has a big personal responsibility to make themselves employable, for example by learning Swedish, getting an education and acquiring knowledge about how Swedish society works. In the budget bill for 2024, the government has invested even more in vocational training to get more people into work, says Labor Market and Integration Minister Johan Pehrson (L).

Many employers demand vocational skills at upper secondary school level and have difficulty finding labor with the right skills. This applies to employers in both the private and public sectors. Vocational training can therefore play an important role in reducing unemployment and the number of long-term unemployed. This is the view of the government, which emphasizes that there is a continued need for investments in vocational education for adults – both upper secondary vocational education within komvux and post-secondary education within the university of applied sciences throughout the country.

For 2024, the government has announced an investment that corresponds approximately to 18,500 new places at regional vocational schools and 3,000 places at the university of applied sciences.