Approximately 43,000 young people aged 18–24, or 8.0 percent of the workforce, were registered as unemployed with the country's employment agencies at the end of July. This is largely unchanged from a year ago, according to the Employment Agency's recurring monthly statistics.
Young people are generally more flexible, willing to move between professions, says forecast manager Lars Lindvall.
Young people come with the light
And usually, a brighter labor market is seen first among young people. But it's a bit too early to draw any such conclusions.
Given that total unemployment is rising, it's not a turnaround that it signals, he says.
As usual, it is young people who lack education who have the hardest time finding jobs, and among those with higher education, few are unemployed. During the recession, it has also been difficult for young people with upper secondary education.
The largest group of young unemployed is now those with upper secondary education. But they usually get jobs quite easily when it turns, says Lindvall.
Large gender differences
There is a big difference between the sexes. Among young men, unemployment is 9.5 percent, but only 6.5 percent among young women.
Women tend to educate themselves to a greater extent, more guys drop out of high school. Then the construction industry – where we have many young men – has been doing poorly, says Lars Lindvall as an explanation.
Seen from the labor market as a whole, total unemployment has increased from 6.8 to 7.1 percent in a year, according to the Employment Agency. The expected turnaround has steadily been postponed to the future as the Swedish economy does not quite want to take off.
But we still believe, like many other assessors, that it will turn around during the autumn when the economy gets a little stronger – and then towards next year, unemployment will decrease, says Lindvall.
The Employment Agency and SCB report unemployment in Sweden every month. But the statistics differ, often quite significantly, as an effect of the authorities measuring in different ways.
For example, youth unemployment at the Employment Agency is 8 percent, but almost 30 percent in SCB's figures.
The Employment Agency uses actually registered with the agencies. And has a narrower age range. Total unemployment is measured in the age range 16–65 years. Youth unemployment refers to young people between 18 and 24 years.
Statistics Sweden (SCB) uses a sample survey. The age range is 15–74 years for total unemployment and 15–24 years for youth unemployment.
As a young unemployed person, a large proportion of full-time students are also counted in SCB's way of measuring (which is based on international criteria). It is often enough that as a full-time student you want an extra job, or that you are waiting for a summer job that will start later, to be counted as unemployed.
Source: Employment Agency, SCB
