Socialist dream gone wrong: Sweden sees problematic unemployment levels among migrants

By Voice of Europe 5 November 2018



Migrants in Sweden - Picture by atranswe / Flickr.com - BY-SA 2.0

Sweden’s goal to reach the lowest unemployment rate in Europe is becoming more and more unrealistic. In the EU’s unemployment ranking the country has fallen from 12th place 18th place in four years.
This is a trend that is the opposite of the government’s goal to reach the EU’s lowest unemployment rate by 2020.
“If you look at unemployment, the curve in Sweden has actually pointed upward, while in many other comparable countries it is falling to levels we haven’t seen in maybe 40 or 50 years,” Robert Bergqvist, a chief economist of lender SEB AB, tells Bloomberg.

Sweden’s central bank predicts the country’s unemployment level to rise to 6.6 percent by 2021.
“At present, a relatively large percentage of those unemployed are persons who, on average, have a lower job-finding rate, for example, persons born outside Europe,” the bank says.
Experts are worried about Sweden’s relatively high unemployment level. Especially among foreign born the level is almost four times as high as among native Swedes.
“When economic growth slows down and we go into a recession then Sweden will be less well prepared than other countries due to structural unemployment,” chief economist Bergqvist says.
What is sure is that Sweden ‘loses’ the EU’s unemployment league, as comes in at 18th place, far behind countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

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