Make Sweden Attractive Again!
The need for new competent employees is not limited to a certain industry, sector, company size or geographical area. The shortage of cooks, plumbers and construction workers is as critical as the shortage of healthcare workers and IT technicians. At both companies, municipalities and county councils, challenges with the provision of skills are high on the agenda, but it does not seem that the Swedish government has realized this.
Many parties have gone to elections with slogans like “limit immigration!”. In the political rhetoric, it is discussed as limiting asylum immigration and making it more difficult to cheat with work permits, but in practice there seems to be a complete lack of understanding of what reality looks like for those affected by the political reforms.
We do not want to debate asylum immigration, but instead stick to our area of expertise, which is work permits, but can state that there are fundamental differences. The most obvious is that one costs society (at least initially) and that the other one pays off right from day one.
Instead of working with policy that is focused on a certain area, the legislator raises the walls all over the board and continuously reduces the opportunities for Swedish companies and authorities to hire the skills they need, while at the same time, through increasingly complicated legislation, the time it takes to the employer to get the go-ahead for his newfound competence.
We also have politicians who talk about exceptions for, among other things, assistant nurses, a professional group that carries a large part of healthcare on their shoulders and who are largely immigrants, but at the same time are not aware that the professional title of assistant nurse will become a protected title already under 2023, well before the new legislation can reasonably be in place. In the meantime, we have a European neighboring country that actively attracts foreign healthcare expertise by offering incentives to come to the country, become nationally qualified to practice their profession, and then contribute to expanding the country’s pool of healthcare professionals. The same trip in Sweden would usually have taken several years and required hundreds of kroner, just for the chance to work in Sweden in a profession that the country has a huge shortage of.
The moderate-led alliance made major reforms to the laws governing labor immigration in 2008. It was a more liberal system that put the employer at the center. It may not have been perfect, but it was certainly well thought out. Today we see reports left and right about how we need to work on our competitiveness to prevent all competence from landing in our neighboring countries. However, our government seems to turn a blind eye to it and continues to build its walls with blinders on. This despite the fact that in the past six months we have already seen how our immigrant skills are starting to look at alternatives in other, more attractive countries.
Our appeal to those in power is to change course regarding labor immigration.
– Simplify the regulations
– Work long-term
– Focus on follow-up checks to prevent fraud and unscrupulous employers
Labor Shortage List – Sweden 2023
Every year, a list of the shortages is compiled. This is done by the Swedish Migration Agency in consultation with the Employment Service, the Swedish Police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is a list of types of work in which there is a high demand for labour. You can find the latest edition here.
Team Permizon
How can we help?
Do you feel that you would rather spend time on other things in the business and at the same time minimize the risk of mistakes in the application process? Then you are welcome to contact us at Permizon.
We offer a comprehensive service for handling applications for work permits. The service covers everything mentioned above plus a little more. Get in touch and we’ll tell you more. You can either call us or fill out the form on this page.
