The Swedish government has found that only between three and four percent of newly arrived migrants with a poor standard of education have any interest in attending further schooling or training.
The new report, which comes from the Swedish Employment Service, shows that only three to four percent of migrants who have come to Sweden in the last two years have shown interest in attending classes to develop their education.
Annie Rubensson, integration and establishment manager at the Employment Service said that the figures could greatly impact migrants chances of employment Sveriges Radio reports.
“This means that their chances of getting a job drops significantly,” Rubensson said adding, “we are working hard to motivate and we will strengthen our efforts in the guidance to inform about what is required in the Swedish labour market.”
“It is not certain that they are aware that, in principle, they require a high school education to get a permanent job in Sweden,” she said.
The extremely low figure shows very little change from last year though Rubensson argued that in the future, “we can absolutely get better and we will be better.”
Professor Olof Åslund of the Institute for Labor Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU) says that many of the migrants simply don’t understand that schooling is required for getting a good job. “They do not understand that the chances of getting a job increase by just this kind of training,” he said.
Åslund said other asylum seekers believe they will be given menial jobs regardless of whether or not they attend the classes and so do not bother with them.
Recent migrants to Sweden are largely unemployed and constitute a large section of the total number of people out of work. By 2018 Swedish authorities believe that 60 percent of all the migrants in Sweden will be unemployed. The report, by the Swedish Public Employment Service, also noted that the migrant unemployment rate was three times that of native Swedes.
In June of 2016, Sweden’s state-owned broadcaster SVT revealed that only 494 migrants of the 163,000 who had recently arrived had found meaningful work.
The problem of integrating migrants into the labour force is also a big problem in Germany where few migrants manage to join the workforce. Some economists have said that mass migration will ultimately harm long-term economic growth rather than help it grow.
Some migrants in Germany have managed to find work, but integration has also presented other problems. Recently a Syrian migrant who found work as a hairdresser and was hailed as a “model of integration,” was arrested after trying to stab his 64-year-old female boss to death over an alleged work dispute.
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