Unemployment among native-born Swedish citizens is approaching three per cent — the point which economists consider to be full employment, while migrant unemployment remains high.
Calling the situation in Sweden “very polarised”, the national employment service has revealed new statistics which show nationwide unemployment for Swedes is now just 4.2 per cent, compared with five per cent in the United Kingdom and ten per cent in Germany. In the southern region of Jönköping. unemployment is already as low as three per cent, the traditional level of so-called full employment, where those few out of work are merely in between jobs and not long-term unemployed.
Yet these encouraging figures contrast sharply with migrant unemployment, which now stands at an average 21.6 per cent across Sweden. Commenting on the situation, employment service spokesman Gregory Golding said: “The situation is very polarised. Unemployment among native-born can’t get much lower than it is now”, reports Sweden Radio.
Mr. Golding said Sweden is now in a situation where almost the whole supply of labour for employers looking to recruit new staff was “entirely foreign born”.
This could be a problem considering the mismatch in migrant labour and what Sweden needs — a problem that Golding acknowledges. On the lack of skills among migrants that are in demand by Swedish businesses, he remarked “we have a situation where it is very difficult to get hold of the workers”.
Despite that, Golding qualified his comments, saying that the Swedish situation with unprecedented mass migration in recent years has been “quite unique. It really has created a strain on the system that was not adapted to the situation”.
The latest employment figures come after end of year stats released by the same agency in 2015 which projected that foreign-born migrants would make up 60 per cent of all unemployed people in Sweden by 2017. At the end of 2015, foreign-born unemployed already made up half of the total nationwide, Breitbart London reported.
Some efforts to find work for migrants have not gone exactly as planned, however. The employment service office in multicultural Malmo — the gateway city to Sweden from mainland Europe which has seen almost all new arrivals pass through in the past two years — hit the headlines after it was revealed the Islamic State had been recruiting there.
The Swedish security services got involved at the office after it was revealed an Islamic State recruiter was operating openly in the office, mixing with users and staff alike, as he attempted to proselytise unemployed migrants.
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