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WORK PERMITS

How many people were granted work permits in Sweden in November?

Sweden's Migration Agency reached a decision in 4,186 work permit cases during October. Here's The Local's monthly in-depth look at how many permits were granted, and to whom.

Published: 6 December 2019 11:44 CET
How many people were granted work permits in Sweden in November?
More than 4,000 IT architects, systems analysts and test managers have been granted work permits this year. Photo: Tobias Röstlund/TT

This article is available to Members of The Local. Read more Membership Exclusives here.

A total of 4,217 first-time work permit applications (arbetstillstånd) were sent to Sweden's Migration Agency last month and a decision was reached in 4,186 cases.

Of those, 3,066 people were successful.

In 646 of the approved cases, the applicant was moving to Sweden to work for a certified employer – companies that have already proved to the Migration Agency that they meet certain criteria (including a recurring need for non-EU hires and proof that they have fulfilled legal requirements in previous work permit cases) and for whom processing takes a maximum of 20 days.

So who did the work permits go to?

Most of them were given to family members of workers (1,490), followed by people coming to Sweden to work as employees (1,245). Family members, including spouses or registered partners, are typically included on a partner's work permit if they will also move to Sweden. If the main applicant has a job offer of over six months, their partner is also eligible for a work permit.

Four permits were handed to self-employed applicants, 73 to guest researchers and 245 to “others”, which includes for example international interns or athletes.

EDITOR'S PICK:

Between January 1st and December 1st, most work permits were awarded to berry pickers and planters (6,162), IT architects, systems analysts and test managers (4,088), fast-food workers and food preparation assistants (1,056), cooks and cold-buffet managers (989), and engineering professionals (942).

Most of the applicants came from Thailand (6,488), India (4,695), Ukraine (1,088), China (841), Turkey (839), Iraq (593), United States (459), Iran (382), Brazil (353) and Pakistan (319).

These figures cover permits awarded by the Swedish Migration Agency as well as Swedish Embassies and Consulates, but do not include athletes, artists, au-pairs, self-employed, visiting researchers, trainees, holiday workers or relatives of employees.

In November there were 15,792 people waiting for an answer on their work permit application.

This article, based on the Migration Agency's statistics, is part of a monthly series for Members of The Local, in which we look at the number of Swedish residence permits granted to international workers. Do you find this article useful? Is there anything else we should be looking at? Please let us know.

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For members

WORKING IN SWEDEN

Swedish Migration Agency launches new system for handling work permits

The Migration Agency will roll out a new processing model for work permits on January 29th, which should, among other things, speed up waiting times for international talent.

Published: 26 January 2024 15:26 CET
Swedish Migration Agency launches new system for handling work permits

“The new way of working aims to make it easier for companies to quickly obtain the labour they need,” Maria Mindhammar, director-general of the Swedish Migration Agency, wrote in a statement.

“To succeed, we need to concentrate our efforts and focus our service offerings where they are needed most – early in the process and in a way that is highly responsive to employers’ individual needs.”

From January 29th, the agency will prioritise service to employers recruiting highly qualified workers. It will do this by introducing a new way of sorting applications for permits, filtering by occupation and industry and sorting out applications which are ready for a decision, which, it claims, will also make it possible to cut processing times drastically.

IN NUMBERS:

It will do this by dividing work permit applications into four categories, ranked from A-D, of which only the first, Category A, will be handled by the new international recruitment units, with a new maximum processing time of just 30 days.

Category A applications will be those already classified as “highly qualified” under the Standard for Swedish Classification of Occupations (SSYK), and will include leadership roles, roles requiring higher university education, and roles requiring university education or equivalent.

In addition to this, the agency will offer a new service to employers handling highly-qualified workers, through help via phone, email, and potentially also in-person meetings, as well as extra support to major projects with large recruitment needs, like battery companies and new steel plants in Norrland which often require labour from third countries.

EXPLAINED:

“We will continue to engage with industry and employer organisations to meet their information needs. The goal is to increase the proportion of complete applications”, Mindhammar said.

Why are they doing this?

“We want Sweden to be competitive and to be able to attract talented people. That means making it simple to apply for work permits and for the process to go quickly,” Sweden’s Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said at a press conference in May 2023 announcing the system. 

“We’ve unfortunately been dragged down by long processing times which have sometimes affected companies’ ability to compete.” 

The so-called certified process, brought in back in 2011 by the Moderate-led Alliance government to reduce the then 12-month wait for work permits for big companies, had also stopped working, they said.

When it started only 20 companies were certified, most of them big employers like Volvo or Ericsson, now there are 640 companies, with many others accessing the process through agents such as EY. 

In an interview with The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast, Mindhammar’s predecessor, Mikael Ribbenvik, said that he had lobbied the government behind the scenes to task him with this, as it would allow him to carry out root and branch reform. 

“I said to the government, ‘if this is what you want, be clear and task us with promoting that [highly skilled] segment’, and they did, and I’m very happy about that,” he said.

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