One group who have soared right to the top of the Swedish employment agency’s wish list are care assistants at residential care homes for children and young people, known as HVB homes. A lot of new HVB homes have opened in the last year to cater for a large influx of unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.
“The job is gruelling but great,” said Tom Rindborn, a 34-year-old care assistant at the private Krica HVB home in Skärholmen, a suburb of Stockholm.
This year more job opportunities are cropping up in most professions than last year in both the public and private sectors, according to job agency Arbetsförmedlingen’s new prognosis.
The agency expects 75,000 more people to be in work by mid-2017, with health-care staff and doctors especially in demand.
Job prospects are also bright for engineers, construction workers and IT specialists.
Competition for unskilled labour remains tough, however.
“Administrators, industrial workers and assembly workers may find it hard to get jobs, mainly because these jobs are disappearing from the Swedish labour market,” said Håkan Gustavsson, the agency’s prognosis manager.
Sweden also needs more people for jobs including surgical nurses, general nurses, special needs teachers, pre-school teachers, IT architects, construction engineers, chefs, truck drivers, painters, mechanics and bricklayers.
Sectors with a surplus of workers include janitors, salespeople, journalists, biologists, bankers, air traffic controllers, warehouse workers, postal workers and kitchen workers.