Hej,

Hope you’ve had a good start to 2023. It’s been a while since we last spoke – I’m back as editor of The Local Sweden after ten months on maternity leave.

I’ve learned several things during these ten months. First of all, Sweden’s 480 paid days of parental leave are extremely generous and much needed. I’ve almost felt guilty at times speaking to friends in other countries who had to return to work after only a few months (or in many cases for dads, days).

“Is there anything I can do about it anyway?” sighed my boss semi-jokingly after I asked if it would be OK if I were to extend my period of leave for the third time last autumn. “No,” I smiled, and took another three months off.

Secondly, yes, it’s paid, but it still sets you back financially. You get 390 days paid at around 80 percent of your salary but capped at around 33,000 kronor a month before tax, so you won’t earn more unless your contract says so. The remaining 90 days are paid out at 180 kronor a day, which is not a lot.

It’s of course still a very good deal, but it’s worth budgeting for (here’s a quick guide to how to make your money stretch further in Sweden in January).

And thirdly, figuring out the rules of parental leave (Can both parents be off at the same time? Should I claim five days a week or seven days a week? Can I work 50 percent?) will inevitably give you a bureaucracy-induced headache.

I’m a native Swedish speaker and I still struggled to understand the rules. My best tip for new parents is to contact the Social Insurance Agency on Facebook if you have general questions – it turned out to be much easier than calling.

How can we be useful to you in 2023?

It’s the start of 2023, so naturally I’m thinking a lot right now about what we want to do here at The Local this year. What our goals are, what topics we want to cover, so that we can leave you and our other members with a feeling that together we’ve got this, together we’ll make this year pretty good after all.

If you have any thoughts about the stories you would like us to focus on in the coming months, you’re always welcome to get in touch. The number of unread emails in my inbox after ten months of leave is truly frightening, but I would love to hear from you. You’re what makes The Local the best it can be.

The top stories in Sweden this week

What have we been up to this week at The Local? Well, for one thing we’ve recorded the first episode of the year of our Sweden in Focus podcast. Becky Waterton, James Savage, Paul O’Mahony and I spoke about holidays, migration, money and a four-decade old royal OUTRAGE.

The episode, published today, is available here.

One of the most common questions we get from readers is asking for an update on [insert migration policy of your choice]. What’s the status of Sweden’s planned language tests for citizenship, what’s really happening to work permits and when, and so on. There are so many different law changes in the pipeline that it’s hard to keep track: here’s a new roundup of what we know.

A new report by Danske Bank on the economic outlook in the Nordic countries in 2023 warns that Sweden’s economy could be facing its most severe shock since the 1990s, and that the outlook for consumers is “bleak”. Happy new year. Becky read the report and wrote about it here, in case you missed it.

Paul has interviewed Tanmaya Lal, the Indian ambassador to Sweden. You can listen to the interview in today’s episode of the podcast, or read it in an article that will be published on The Local’s homepage on Monday morning.

And we’re still trying to figure out why Sweden is behind almost half of the deportation notices sent to Brits in Europe in the past two years. Hopefully we’ll be able to give you an update on that in the coming weeks.

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members that gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to your inbox, by going to your newsletter preferences.