High youth unemployment is a common theme in election campaigns regardless of which party is in government.
Sweden has the highest proportion of unemployed young people in the entire EU, according to the standard measurement used by Statistics Sweden and the EU's statistical agency Eurostat. Around 24 percent of young people, compared to the EU average of 15 percent.
That is true, according to the international rules and figures available, says Anders Forslund, a long-time researcher in labor market issues.
Hundreds of thousands of students
The main reason is that hundreds of thousands of Swedish young people are registered as unemployed, even though they are studying full-time. It is enough for them to be available for extra work, or have a summer job waiting for them, to be counted as unemployed.
In March, 211,000 people aged 15-24 were unemployed, according to Statistics Sweden. Of these, 163,000 were full-time students.
This leaves a total (211,000-163,000) of 48,000 young unemployed people. This is quite close to the Swedish Public Employment Service's figure of 38,000, with a narrower age range of 18-24 years.
The situation is different in countries with other student support systems and where many students are considered apprentices.
"An apprentice is by definition employed. So an apprentice cannot become unemployed," says Forslund.
Second lowest
So if you are interested in unemployment as a problem, then you should measure what is called NEET, young people who are neither working nor studying, as a proportion of the entire youth population.
When measuring the proportion of NEETs in relation to the entire youth population, Sweden's position changes fundamentally. With a proportion of around 5–6 percent, corresponding to around 60,000 individuals, Sweden ranks second lowest in the entire EU.
This is a level that has been fairly stable over the past five years, but has declined over a longer period of time.
