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This report delivers evidence-based and practical recommendations on how to better support employment and economic development in Sweden. It builds on sub-national data analysis and consultations with local stakeholders in Galve and Stockholm. It provides a comparative framework to understand the role of the local level in contributing to more and better quality jobs. The report can help national and local policy makers in Sweden build more effective and sustainable partnerships at the local level, which join-up efforts and achieve stronger outcomes across employment, training, and economic development policies. Co-ordinated policies can help workers find suitable jobs, while also stimulating entrepreneurship and productivity, which increases the quality of life and prosperity within a community as well as throughout the country.

This chapter provides an overview of Sweden’s employment and skills system. Sweden is known for its long tradition of active labour market policy, where the unemployed are offered relatively generous benefits and training opportunities. A key feature of Swedish employment policy is that it has an explicitly national perspective on the labour market. It emphasizes mobility over retraining for the local labour market, meaning that labour market policy operates with a national perspective on the matching of the supply and demand of skills.

The Local Job Creation project involves a series of country reviews in Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy (Autonomous Province of Trento), Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States (California and Michigan). The key stages of each review are summarised in .

To better understand the role of the local level in contributing to job creation and productivity, the OECD Local Job Creation review examined local activities in two Swedish regions: 1) Gävle; and 2) Stockholm. This chapter provides a labour market and economic overview of each region as well as the results from an OECD LEED statistical tool which looks at the relationship between skills supply and demand at the sub-national level.

Across the OECD, policy-makers are grappling with a critical question: how to create jobs? The recent financial crisis and economic downturn has had serious consequences across most OECD countries, with rising unemployment rates and jobs being lost across many sectors. Indeed, for some countries, the effects the downturn brought with it are continuing, if not amplifying. Shrinking public budgets in some countries also mean that policy makers must now do more with less. In this context, it is necessary to think laterally about how actions in one area, such as employment and training, can have simultaneous benefits in others, such as creating new jobs and better supporting labour market inclusion.

While Sweden weathered the impacts of the economic crisis better than most OECD countries, disparities are rising across the country. Unemployment remains stubbornly high compared to previous national trends and a number of groups, such as immigrants and youth face significant challenges in building labour market success. Creating quality jobs will be a key route towards building new economic advantage and opportunities.

Stimulating job creation at the local level requires integrated actions across employment, training, and economic development portfolios. Co-ordinated place-based policies can help workers find suitable jobs, while also contributing to demand by stimulating productivity. This requires flexible policy management frameworks, information, and integrated partnerships which leverage the efforts of local stakeholders. This chapter outlines the key recommendations emerging from the OECD review of local job creation policies in Sweden.

This chapter highlights findings from the Local Job Creation Dashboard in Sweden. The findings are discussed through the four thematic areas of the OECD review: 1) better aligning policies and programmes to local employment development; 2) adding value through skills; 3) targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs; and 4) being inclusive.