SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

WORK PERMITS

EXPLAINED: What do we know about Sweden’s new work permit bill?

Sweden's parliament has voted through a new bill empowering the government to increase the minimum salary for a work permit. This is what we know so far.

EXPLAINED: What do we know about Sweden's new work permit bill?
Sweden's Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard has yet to say what the new salary threshold will be. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

What is the new bill and where does it come from? 

The new bill, called “A higher subsistence requirement for labour migrants” (Ett höjt försörjningskrav för arbetskraftsinvandrare), was formally proposed by the former Social Democrat government on September 6th after discussions in the social insurance committee. 

The Social Democrat government on February 6th appointed the judge Anita Linder to carry out an inquiry into “improved labour migration”, which was then sent out for consultation and discussed in the parliament’s social affairs committee, before the government submitted the proposal to parliament. 

What does the bill say? 

The bill empowers the government to raise the maintenance requirement for work permit applicants from outside the EU, the Nordic countries and Switzerland above the current 13,000 kronor a month. 

The bill does not specifically state how much higher the maintenance requirement should be, or propose a date for when the changes should come into force.

In the proposal, it states that the new law can be implemented on “the day the government decides”. The new threshold, meanwhile, is to be set by a government directive which is supposed to be issued at the same time the law comes into force. 

How high is the new maintenance threshold likely to be? 

It’s not yet clear. However, the government may choose to follow the Tidö Agreement through which the far-right Sweden Democrats and the three government parties (the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals) agreed to back Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson as prime minister. 

In this agreement the parties agreed to set the minimum salary for work permits to be awarded at the median salary in Sweden, which is about 33,000 kronor a month.

This is a compromise between the 35,000 kronor minimum salary put forward by the Sweden Democrats and the Christian Democrats, and the proposals from the Moderates and Social Democrats, who wanted to set the rate at 85 percent of the median salary (about 27,540 a month) and the Social Democrats, who have floated a minimum salary of about 27,000 kronor. 

In an interview with Radio Sweden on December 3rd, Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard stated that the 33,000 kronor a month limit was not yet set, and that the government would “look into the exact amount”. She also stated that the government “will also be able to make exceptions for some individual professional groups,” although she did not go into detail on which groups this would include.

The Centre Party and the Liberal Party were both against the proposal in the run-up to September’s general election, arguing that Sweden’s existing liberal labour migration laws have been economically beneficial.

The Liberals are likely to respect the Tidö Agreement now they are part of the government. 

 READ ALSO: How do Sweden’s political parties want to reform work permits?

Who is against raising the salary threshold? 

The Centre Party has been the biggest opponent in parliament, arguing that the hotel, restaurant and retail industries in particular will struggle to find staff if they are not able to hire workers internationally. 

Martin Ådahl, the party’s economics and business spokesperson, told The Local his party was opposed on both practical and principled grounds to the proposal.

“It is clear in practical terms that many businesses rely on persons from abroad that have qualifications which lead to more growth and jobs in Sweden,” he said. “This is dependent on people starting with reasonable wages because they are new and don’t speak the language. It’s a loss for both Sweden and the individuals.” 

But he said the party’s liberal ideology also made supporting the proposal impossible. 

“On principle, it is wrong that authorities and boards staffed by public officials should tell businesses which talents they should hire at what wages,” he said. “This kind of wage regulation and minimum wages is something Sweden is opposed to otherwise.”

A lot of criticism has also come from business. Ann Öberg, the chief executive of Almega, a trade body representing businesses in the IT, telecoms, engineering, architecture, media, private healthcare, train operations, and security industries, wrote an opinion piece in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper at the end of October criticising the move. 

She argued that it was unrealistic to expect unemployed people already living in Sweden to fill the gap created when low-skilled labour migrants can no longer come to the country. 

READ ALSO: Swedish businesses attack work permit threshold

This article was originally published in November 2022 and updated following Malmer Stenergard’s comments in December 2022.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

WORK PERMITS

EXPLAINED: Sweden’s plans for a new work permit system for high-skilled labour

Sweden's Migration Agency will at the end of this year launch a new international recruitment organisation, with separate units devoted to highly qualified work permit applicants. Here's what we know so far.

EXPLAINED: Sweden's plans for a new work permit system for high-skilled labour

Why is Sweden’s Migration Agency scrapping its old system for highly qualified labour? 

Mainly because work permits for highly qualified labour are taking too long to process. 

“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 announcing the system. 

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

The major projects currently being established in Norrland as part of Sweden’s green industrial transition also require international recruitment on a new scale, Ribbenvik added. 

“It’s battery companies, new steel plants, and not just in Norrland,” he said. “These are very important new projects for Sweden, and they very often require labour from third countries.”

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, has also stopped working. 

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. 

Ribbenvik said that of the 104,000 work permit related cases the agency received last year, 40 percent had come through the certification system, with 20 percent coming from industry sectors deemed as “high risk” by the agency. 

What’s the background to the decision? 

Sweden’s new government in December instructed the Migration Agency in 2023 to “promote highly qualified labour immigration to Sweden” as one of the core tasks given to it in its instructions for the year, requesting the agency to report back on the measures it was taking by September 4th. 

In an interview with the Sweden in Focus podcast, Migration Agency Director General 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.

How is the system going to be changed? 

The certified system is going to be phased out, probably by the end of the year. 

Instead, all work permit applications to bring highly qualified labour to Sweden, regardless of whether the company is certified or not, will be handled by new “international recruitment units”, or enheter för internationell rekrytering. 

These will not only process cases but will also include ‘service teams’, who will work closely with employers and businesses in the run-up to applications being submitted, so that they are complete. 

“We are going to provide a better service,” Ribbenvik said. “We are going to be focused on the needs of business. We are going to communicate better on these issues together with business, and we are going to have special service teams which are going to support businesses and employees in establishing people in the country.”

The general idea is to shift attention from the employee applying for a permit to the Swedish businesses seeking to recruit them, and to take some of the jobs that agents such as EY or major companies’ in-house HR departments have carried out as part of the certified process inside the Migration Agency. 

“We’ve been very focused on the individual and we’ve seen businesses a little bit as something external,” Ribbenvik said. “And that’s something we want to reverse in our service, to give services to these companies so they can have an overall picture of the [people being recruited for] their new project.”

The Migration Agency says it will aim to handle “complete” applications to bring highly qualified labour to Sweden within 30 days.

Although this is lower than the 10 days for new applications and 20 days for renewals agreed under the certified process, Ribbenvik said it was “an improvement” on current actual handling times. 

“Our impression from discussions with businesses is that this is roughly equivalent to how quickly they need a decision,” he added. 

Which roles will be covered by the new international recruitment units? 

The Migration Agency plans to divide 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 and encompassed by the 30 day target. 

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 total, this covers 238 separate roles in the SSYK system.

How will the system treat applications in the other three categories? 

Category B. All applications for work permits in occupations with special rules will be grouped in Category B. These will include seasonal work such as berry pickers, country transfers within multinational companies, permits concerning holders of the EU Blue Card, artists, researchers, athletes/coaches, au-pairs, trainees, youth exchanges, and volunteers.

This category will also include people seeking a work permit to come to Sweden to start their own business, and (if it is not phased out beforehand) applications under the so-called spårbyte, or “track change system”, which allows people who have originally applied for asylum to apply for a work permit from within Sweden. 

Category D. This category will include work permit applications within industries that the Migration Agency sees as at a higher risk of abuse and so requiring more in-depth monitoring and investigation. These include cleaning, construction, and the hotel and restaurant industry. “I’m not saying all the companies in these branches have problems. There are decent companies, but the risk is greater,” Ribbenvik said at the press conference. 

Category C. This category will cover all other applications, so those which are neither for high qualified labour, nor in a high-risk industry, nor covered by special rules.

At the press conference, Ribbenvik stressed that Category C applications would also have access to the new service teams. 

“It’s important to understand that for many businesses it’s not just about people with university degrees,” he said. “If you’re setting up something big, you need all sorts of job descriptions, both high and low skilled, and even if we aren’t going to make any promises of 30 days for these people, we will work very closely with those setting up big projects in Sweden through these service teams.” 

So what happens next? 

The Migration Agency on May 12th made what it called an inriktningsbeslut, a position paper setting out its intentions.

It will now set up working groups with businesses to discuss details of how the new system will work, before Ribbenvik’s replacement announces the final plans on September 4th. 

“We are early now and what we want to do is work with the partners in the labour market, so we can understand the need to make corrections if there are things we have misunderstood,” Ribbenvik said. 

SHOW COMMENTS