Where do people start businesses, and where are the jobs?
Short answer: About 11 new businesses are started every year per 1,000 working-age inhabitants, almost as many as in 2010. Bankruptcies have risen since 2022 and in 2024 and 2025 were at the highest levels since the series began in 2013. Health and social care is the largest industry with 16 per cent of jobs. Only 64 of 290 municipalities have more jobs than employed residents, and Solna has more than twice as many.
How much companies do research, and where in the country, is on Research and innovation. What companies export and to which countries is on Trade, exports and imports.
How many start up, and what businesses turn over.
Sweden
Businesses that go bankrupt, and the employees affected.
How many, how large, and against how many start.
Sweden
The whole country, thirty years back.
The largest industries in the municipality.
Daytime versus night-time population.
Sweden
What businesses think of the municipality's services.
Which firms create the jobs?
New firm creation in Sweden has been fairly flat for fifteen years, while bankruptcies have risen since 2022, and in 2024 and 2025 there were more than in any year since Kolada's series began in 2013. The rise came as interest rates went up and households held back.
Compared with its neighbours, Sweden sits in the middle. A smaller share of firms are newly started each year than in Norway and Iceland, but more than in Denmark. The share running their own business is higher than in Norway and Denmark but lower than in Finland and Iceland. More firms do not automatically mean more growth, though: research points to the few young, fast-growing firms creating the jobs, not the number of small firms.
New firms and the self-employed in the Nordics
| Country | New firms 2023, share of all active | Own business 2024, share of the employed |
|---|---|---|
| Sweden | 8.7 % | 8.2 % |
| Norway | 11.8 % | 4.3 % |
| Denmark | 7.3 % | 6.9 % |
| Finland | 9.0 % | 10.5 % |
| Iceland | 11.2 % | 11.8 % |
Source: Eurostat, business demography (bd_size) and the labour force survey (lfsa_esgaed and lfsa_egaed, ages 15 to 64), retrieved October 2026. The share running their own business is our calculation of the self-employed divided by all employed. Countries have changed methods in the business demography several times, so small differences should not be read too closely.
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Is it small firms that create the jobs?
No, it is the young ones. Once firm age is taken into account there is no clear link between size and growth. Startups and young firms account for a large share of new jobs, but many of them also close. The study uses US data.
Haltiwanger, Jarmin and Miranda (2013), Review of Economics and Statistics.
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Do many small firms mean a lot of entrepreneurship?
Not necessarily. In a comparison of 50 countries, those where many are self-employed have fewer billionaires who built their own firms. Countries with higher income, more trust, lower taxes, more venture capital and simpler rules have more such entrepreneurs but fewer self-employed.
Henrekson and Sanandaji (2014), PNAS.
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Does lack of money stop people from starting firms?
Swedish data suggest so. People who won the lottery or received an inheritance more often became self-employed, which suggests many would start a business if they could borrow or had their own capital. Later studies are less clear-cut.
Lindh and Ohlsson (1996), Economic Journal.
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Are the most successful founders young?
No. Among the one in a thousand new firms that grow fastest, the founder was on average 45 years old at the start. Experience seems to matter more than youth. The study uses US data.
Azoulay, Jones, Kim and Miranda (2020), American Economic Review: Insights.
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What happened when the dividend tax in closely held firms was cut?
Owners took out more as dividends and less as salary. When the tax was cut in 2006 their total income did not rise, they just relabelled it. The study says nothing about investment or jobs.
Alstadsæter and Jacob (2016), Scandinavian Journal of Economics.
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Do firms hire more when payroll taxes are cut?
A little. When the payroll tax for young people was cut in 2007, firms with many young employees grew, and employment among the young rose by 2 to 3 percentage points. The firms also raised wages for all their employees, not just the young.
Saez, Schoefer and Seim (2019), American Economic Review.
Where the figures come from.
- Source: Kolada. New businesses and workplaces (originally Tillväxtanalys), bankruptcies, businesses, turnover, industry breadth, employment by industry, commuting and gross regional product (originally Statistics Sweden), and business climate from SKR's Insikt survey.
- Our own processing of Kolada data: daytime versus night-time population (employed by workplace divided by employed by residence) and total wages day versus night.
- Our own processing of Kolada data, bankruptcies in depth: number of bankruptcies and employees affected (Kolada's rate per 1,000 residents times the population aged 16 to 64), bankruptcies per 1000 firms and per 100 new firms, and employees per bankruptcy. Business climate overall is Kolada's old measure up to 2023 and the new one from 2024.
- Source: OECD (Timely Indicators of Entrepreneurship, originally Statistics Sweden), CC BY 4.0. Bankruptcies in the whole country per year and month since 1996 and per industry since 2009. The seasonal pattern is our own processing. Also gives the national bankruptcies per resident, per new firm and per company before 2013.
- Source: SCB, CC0. Commuting per municipality 1993 to 2019 from the register based labour market statistics (RAMS) and GRP per employed person for the whole country 1993 to 2011 from the regional accounts. The shares and ratios are our own processing.
- Not included: Svenskt Näringsliv's ranking of the business climate (protected, may not be republished), bankruptcy statistics from the credit reference agencies and the Swedish Companies Registration Office register, whose terms for republication we have not been able to establish. The Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis's bankruptcies per month and industry wait for the same reason; months and industries come from the OECD instead, for the whole country.
Nothing is estimated by us except the ratios under own processing. Everything comes from Kolada and the OECD. Each municipality's own page has more figures on work and the economy; click a name in the lists.