Welling wants to see a joint and cross-border employment agency in the Öresund region to better match job seekers in Skåne with job vacancies in the Copenhagen area.
"We are a large labor market and have long tried to work towards an integrated labor market. We are experiencing major problems getting the labor we know is available on the Swedish side," she says, citing healthcare as an example.
Want to hire Swedes
She is supported by a report from Greater Copenhagen. The report identifies eight industries where the Copenhagen area is experiencing a major labor shortage, while Skåne has job seekers with corresponding skills.
This applies to construction, sales, kitchens and restaurants, IT, administration, pedagogy, and healthcare.
If Welling had her way, she would gladly hire Swedes in healthcare.
It's extremely frustrating to be in the situation we are in on the Danish side. We also believe that those who know Swedish can understand an older Dane more easily, and that it's better rather than us having to bring in labor from the east.
Welling points to a number of measures to improve matching: a system that automatically publishes job vacancies in Denmark on the Swedish Public Employment Service's job bank in Sweden; expecting job seekers to apply for vacancies across the strait; and a more seamless system for social benefits.
Abolition of border controls
In addition, she wants to see the abolition of the border controls that Sweden introduced in 2015.
It is absolutely crucial that the trains run frequently, and because there are border controls you can't actually run as many trains per hour as you otherwise could.
Another challenge is that 19 percent of the unemployed in Skåne's border municipalities are non-EU citizens, and therefore cannot take a job across the strait because it could negatively affect their Swedish residence permit.
It's a conversation that the Swedish and Danish governments must have, Welling says, and continues:
There are also people with Swedish citizenship who have the right education, but for whom pension systems and other barriers make it difficult to move. This speaks in favor of a more seamless system.
In Skåne's border municipalities, 37,000 people are unemployed, according to a report from Greater Copenhagen. Of these, 42 percent are long-term unemployed, 19 percent are non-EU citizens, and 19 percent are aged 20 to 29.
In the Copenhagen area, employers are facing recruitment difficulties, with one in five jobs (21.9 percent) unable to be filled with the right skills.
The report shows that increased mobility and better matching can help solve the labor shortage in Copenhagen and at the same time reduce unemployment in Skåne.
Strengthened matching is estimated to yield socio-economic benefits of up to SEK 13 billion.
Source: Greater Copenhagen, Øresunddirekt
