Most Ukrainian asylum seekers in Sweden remain unemployed, despite the fact that the majority of them arrived a year ago and the local authorities pledged all kinds of assistance and support.
Last spring, then-Labor Minister Eva Nordmark even greeted Ukrainians on the quay of Nynashamn in Greater Stockholm. "We have lots of vacant jobs right now and I see that there is a great opportunity here," the Social Democrat said back then.
But since then things have been slow. Of the roughly 30,000 Ukrainians of working age who came to Sweden, fewer than 1,500 have found work with the help of the Employment Agency.
"We have limited opportunities to offer support. But it's also about the fact that we have to reach out with information about the support we can offer," Therese Lindstrom of the Employment Agency told Swedish media.
There are no official statistics on how many Ukrainians have found work on their own, but a survey by the organization Ukrainian Professional Support Center shows that wholly seven out of ten Ukrainians in Sweden remain unemployed, despite nine out of ten apparently willing to get a job.
Ukrainians arriving in Sweden have the right to stay in the Nordic country according to the EU Temporary Protection Directive. However, they neither enter the population registry, nor do they get a social security number. This means that they lack the necessary insurance coverage and cannot be offered internships, Therese Lindstrom explained. Without a social security number, it is also difficult to open a bank account or obtain other services.
Current Labor and Integration Minister Johan Pehrson admitted that more needs to be done to address the situation.
High unemployment is typical for immigrants in Sweden, despite the government's decades-long efforts to portray immigration as profitable for the economy. According to Statistics Sweden, unemployment among the foreign-born amounted to 16.1 percent in 2022, as opposed to low single digits among the domestic-born. In some population groups, the situation is much worse. For instance, a 2021 report found that only a third of Syrians living in Sweden are self-sufficient.
The influx of Ukrainian asylum seekers after the beginning of Russia's special operation has sparked numerous problems across the entire European Union, ranging from housing issues such as in the UK, where tens of thousands Ukrainians are facing homelessness as a result of a botched hosting program, to more general troubles such as high costs, cultural clashes and communication problems that occur across the entire bloc.
A recent survey by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) found that merely one in three Ukrainians feels part of their host country’s community, with an overwhelming majority (79 percent) admitting to struggling to make ends meet.