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WORK PERMITS

Swedish inquiry to conclude on median salary threshold for work permits

Sweden's migration minister will tomorrow receive recommendations on how to implement the planned median salary threshold for work permits, opening the way for it to come into force by the start of next year.

Published: 14 February 2024 10:02 CET
Swedish inquiry to conclude on median salary threshold for work permits
Nurses and other health workers are liable to fall beneath the median salary threshold. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

The Inquiry on a needs-based work permit system is set to deliver its conclusions to Maria Malmer Stenergard at a press conference at 2pm on Thursday afternoon, the minister’s press secretary Erik Engström, confirmed, although he said the exact time of the press conference might still change. 

“We are not going to have a list of professions in our conclusions,” the inquiry’s secretary, Ulrika Mossberg, told the Local. “We will propose a system which can determine how certain professions, which do not have a particularly high salary but which are still required, can be excused from the salary requirement.” 

Sweden’s government changed the instructions given to the “Inquiry on a needs-based work permit system” in February last year, calling for it to develop “proposals for measures that tighten the conditions for labour immigration”, with the starting point that work permits should in normal cases “only be granted for work which has a salary level equivalent to the median salary”. 

Sweden’s median salary was 34,200 kronor in 2022, meaning the new proposal will make the minimum salary for a work permit significantly higher than the the 27,360 kronor threshold which came into force last November. 

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The inquiry had been launched by the former Social Democrat-led government in June 2022, with a remit to look into reinstating the system of labour market testing, under which unions worked with employer organisations to agree a list of skills and jobs which are in demand. 

Mossberg said that the terms of the inquiry’s instructions meant that its chair, the judge Ann-Jeanette Eriksson, could not question the government’s proposal to raise the minimum salary to the median salary. 

“It should be close to the median salary,” she said, “but maybe we have some small possibility to suggest minor adjustments.” 

While representatives from the Justice Department have been part of a group of stakeholders kept briefed on the inquiry’s progress, Mossberg said that the press conference would mark the first time Malmer Stenergard will have seen the recommendations in full.     

EXPLAINED: How a new law gets made in Sweden

Once the inquiry is delivered, it will open the way for the government to push forward with its plans to bring in a median salary for work permits, drafting proposals which will then be sent out to consultation before a bill is submitted to parliament. 

The new work permit salary threshold is likely to come into force in early 2025. 

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WORK PERMITS

Business leaders: Work permit threshold ‘has no place in Swedish labour model’

Sweden's main business group has attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits, saying it is "unacceptable" political interference in the labour model and risks seriously affecting national competitiveness.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:37 CEST
Updated: 26 April 2024 06:11 CEST
Business leaders: Work permit threshold 'has no place in Swedish labour model'

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said in its response to the government’s consultation, submitted on Thursday afternoon, that it not only opposed the proposal to raise the minimum salary for a work permit to Sweden’s median salary (currently 34,200 kronor a month), but also opposed plans to exempt some professions from the higher threshold. 

“To place barriers in the way of talent recruitment by bringing in a highly political salary threshold in combination with labour market testing is going to worsen the conditions for Swedish enterprise in both the short and the long term, and risks leading to increased fraud and abuse,” the employer’s group said.   

The group, which represents businesses across most of Sweden’s industries, has been critical of the plans to further raise the salary threshold for work permits from the start, with the organisation’s deputy director general, Karin Johansson, telling The Local this week that more than half of those affected by the higher threshold would be skilled graduate recruits Swedish businesses sorely need.   

But the fact that it has not only rejected the higher salary threshold, but also the proposed system of exemptions, will nonetheless come as a blow to Sweden’s government, and particular the Moderate Party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, which has long claimed to be the party of business. 

The confederation complained that the model proposed in the conclusions of the government inquiry published in February would give the government and political parties a powerful new role in setting salary conditions, undermining the country’s treasured system of collective bargaining. 

The proposal for the higher salary threshold, was, the confederation argued, “wrong in principle” and did “not belong in the Swedish labour market”. 

“That the state should decide on the minimum salary for certain foreign employees is an unacceptable interference in the Swedish collective bargaining model, where the parties [unions and employers] weigh up various needs and interested in negotiations,” it wrote. 

In addition, the confederation argued that the proposed system where the Sweden Public Employment Service and the Migration Agency draw up a list of exempted jobs, which would then be vetted by the government, signified the return of the old system of labour market testing which was abolished in 2008.

“The government agency-based labour market testing was scrapped because of it ineffectiveness, and because it was unreasonable that government agencies were given influence over company recruitment,” the confederation wrote. 

“The system meant long handling times, arbitrariness, uncertainty for employers and employees, as well as an indirect union veto,” it added. “Nothing suggests it will work better this time.” 

For a start, it said, the Public Employment Service’s list of professions was inexact and outdated, with only 179 professions listed, compared to 430 monitored by Statistics Sweden. This was particularly the case for new skilled roles within industries like battery manufacturing. 

“New professions or smaller professions are not caught up by the classification system, which among other things is going to make it harder to recruit in sectors which are important for the green industrial transition,” the confederation warned. 

Rather than implement the proposals outlined in the inquiry’s conclusions, it concluded, the government should instead begin work on a new national strategy for international recruitment. 

“Sweden instead needs a national strategy aimed at creating better conditions for Swedish businesses to be able to attract, recruit and retain international competence.”

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