Even Sweden’s Best Regions Still Have Higher Unemployment than the UK

According to Swedish unemployment statistics, the country’s region with the lowest unemployment is still much higher than the British average as unemployment figures continue to grow.

The figures, which were released Tuesday by the Swedish Public Employment Service in a press release, show that there are currently 380,000 people registered with the Employment Service at the end of January, up 30,000 from the same period in 2019.

The county of Uppsala has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at 5.9 per cent, a figure which is much higher than the United Kingdom, where the average unemployment rate has remained at just 3.8 per cent, the lowest since 1975.

While many economists predicted that Brexit would lead to job losses and increased unemployment, the opposite has been true so far, with Sweden, a member of the European Union and one of the most welcoming countries for asylum seekers, seeing an increasing unemployment trend.

The Swedish regions of Blekinge, Gävleborg, and Södermanland have much higher unemployment rates than Uppsala at 10.2 per cent, far above the Eurozone average of 7.4 per cent as of December and approaching that of Spain’s 12.7 per cent.

The massive disparity between the unemployment rate of native Swedes and foreign-born residents continues in the new statistics with the native unemployment rate climbing to 4.2 per cent while the migrant rate is now 18.9 per cent.

Despite various programmes to help get migrants into the labour market, Sweden has struggled, with 90 per cent of the migrants who arrived in the country during the height of the 2015 migrant crisis remaining unemployed.

Earlier this month, the Employment Service released statistics showing that just one in 16 migrants enrolled in its establishment programme was able to find work that was not directly subsidised by Swedish taxpayers.

Staffan Johansson, Head of Unit at the Employment Service, claimed that the overall rate of 31 per cent employment for migrants in the programme could be somewhat explained by the poor economy in Sweden.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com