How many have a job, and what do they earn?
Short answer: 5.8 percent of everyone aged 18 to 65 were unemployed at the Public Employment Service 2025, against 7.2 percent 2010. 80.7 percent of those aged 20 to 64 had a job 2025, but only 69.9 percent of those born abroad. 6.2 percent of young people aged 16 to 24 neither worked nor studied 2024. A woman's monthly wage was on average 90 percent of a man's 2025, 40,600 against 45,100 kronor.
How many lack a job, and for how long.
How many work.
How the share in work rises with years in Sweden is on Migration, and sick leave for psychiatric diagnoses on Mental health.
Young people who neither work nor study.
Young people not in work or education on the map. Youth unemployment compared with the EU and why the measures differ is on Young people.
Do people work in what they trained for?
Monthly wage per occupation for women and men.
Women Men All New occupational classification
Average monthly salary in the whole country, all sectors, converted to full time and before tax. Statistics Sweden does not report salary per occupation for individual municipalities. Occupations with fewer than 2,000 employees are left out. All occupations before 2014 follow the older occupational classification; the individual occupations are available from 2014.
Taxes, unemployment benefits and who gets the job.
Unemployment in Sweden has risen three years in a row and was 8.8 percent in 2025 according to Eurostat. That is higher than in Norway, Denmark and Iceland, and the fourth highest in the EU after Spain, Finland and Greece. Only Finland is worse off in the Nordics, and there unemployment has risen even faster.
At the same time Sweden has one of the highest shares in work. More than eight in ten aged 20 to 64 have a job, and in the Nordics only Iceland is higher. Both are true at once because many in Sweden want to work: anyone looking for a job counts as unemployed, students included. The gap between natives and the foreign born is also large, and unemployment is far higher among those with little education or who recently arrived in the country.
The research below concerns the tools politics usually reaches for: lower taxes on work, lower payroll taxes, the level of unemployment benefits, labour market programmes and hiring subsidies. The effects are often real but smaller than the debate suggests, and they cost money. What unemployment insurance and the other benefits pay today is on The safety net.
Unemployment and employment in the Nordics
| Country | Unemployment 2024 | Unemployment 2025 | In work 2025, ages 20 to 64 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden | 8.4 % | 8.8 % | 81.8 % |
| Norway | 4.0 % | 4.5 % | 79.5 % |
| Denmark | 6.2 % | 6.4 % | 79.8 % |
| Finland | 8.4 % | 9.7 % | 76.3 % |
| Iceland | 3.6 % | 4.5 % | 85.8 % |
Source: Eurostat (une_rt_a and lfsi_emp_a), retrieved October 2026. All countries are measured with the same labour force survey and the same definitions, so the figures are comparable. Unemployment covers ages 15 to 74. Figures for 2025 may still be revised.
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Does lower tax on work create more jobs?
For the earned income tax credit it cannot be said with certainty. The study that tried to measure the effect directly found that the differences between groups were too small to give a credible answer. Estimates showing more jobs therefore rest on models, not measured effects.
Edmark, Liang, Mörk and Selin (2016), FinanzArchiv.
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Do young people get jobs from lower payroll taxes?
A little. When the payroll tax for young people was cut sharply in 2007, the share of young people in work rose by 2 to 3 percentage points. Wages for young people did not rise relative to older workers, but firms with many young employees grew and raised pay for all their staff. Each new job was expensive: more than four times what it costs to hire a person at the average wage.
Saez, Schoefer and Seim (2019), American Economic Review. Egebark and Kaunitz (2013), IFAU working paper 2013:27.
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Does unemployment last longer with higher benefits?
Somewhat. Higher benefits make some people look for work a little more slowly, and that effect is if anything largest early in the spell. At the same time household consumption drops from the start and more the longer it lasts. The study therefore gives no support for stepping benefits down over time.
Kolsrud, Landais, Nilsson and Spinnewijn (2018), American Economic Review.
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Do labour market programmes work?
Over time, often. A review of more than 200 evaluations shows that the effect is close to zero right after the programme but clearer two to three years later. Programmes that build skills, such as training, do the most good over a somewhat longer horizon. The effect is larger for women, for the long-term unemployed and in recessions.
Card, Kluve and Weber (2018), Journal of the European Economic Association.
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Do new start jobs create real jobs?
Partly. New start jobs help unemployed people find work faster, but about 63 percent of them are jobs that would have existed anyway. A later study shows that a higher subsidy helps more people find jobs, while a longer subsidy instead helps more people stay in their jobs.
Liljeberg, Sjögren and Vikström (2012), IFAU report 2012:6. Sjögren and Vikström (2015), Labour Economics.
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Are the long-term unemployed penalised?
Yes, but only while it lasts. In an experiment with fictitious applications from young people, applicants were invited to interviews less often if they were currently unemployed for at least nine months. The effect showed up for jobs requiring upper secondary education, not for jobs requiring a university degree. Unemployment further back in time made no difference.
Eriksson and Rooth (2014), American Economic Review.
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Does your name affect who gets called to interview?
Yes. Men with Arabic-sounding names were called to interview less often than men with Swedish-sounding names and the same qualifications. Roughly one employer in four discriminated. Discrimination still explains less than a sixth of the unemployment gap between natives and the foreign born.
Carlsson and Rooth (2007), Labour Economics.
Where the figures come from.
- Source: Kolada. Unemployment, long-term unemployment, unemployment benefit, the labour force and young people not in work or education per municipality, originally from the Public Employment Service, IAF and Statistics Sweden.
- Statistics Sweden, labour market status of the population (CC0): employment rate for ages 20 to 64, total, by sex and for those born abroad.
- Statistics Sweden, match between education and occupation (CC0), the same table as the map layer Occupations and matching.
- Statistics Sweden, wage structure statistics (CC0): monthly wage per occupation and sex for the whole country.
- Swedish Public Employment Service statistics (open data, free to use): the earlier years of unemployment, 1996 to 2022, per municipality.
- Statistics Sweden, register-based labour market statistics RAMS (CC0): employment 1993 to 2019.
- Not included: wages per municipality (Statistics Sweden does not report them per occupation), the Labour Force Survey (counties and Sweden only, a sample) and the Public Employment Service's own monthly statistics (Kolada's yearly series are enough here).
We calculated the earlier years of unemployment and long-term unemployment ourselves, see the footnotes. Each municipality also has its own page with its figures: choose the municipality above and follow the link.