Throughout March 2019, 273 cultural workers signed up for the Employment Service. This year, 1,474 cultural workers have registered with the Swedish Employment Service in March.

That's more than five times as many.

- Sure, we've had mass unemployment before, but this is a completely different context. When you are not allowed to have physical contact, it affects the whole society. Then the cultural workers can also not switch to their bread jobs as many have between the jobs. There are no jobs for those jobs either. We at the Employment Service are also falling short, says Kevni Zulal, Head of Unit for Employment Culture Media.

About half of the cultural workers who sign up for the Employment Service work in the "stage and tone" category.

The most common professional groups are musicians, photographers and journalists. Many are also actors, producers and project managers (see more in the fact box below).

"Hitting harder than others"

Culture workers and freelancers are hit harder than others, according to Kevni Zulal, because you have to be completely unemployed to be able to get a-cash.

- If you have your own company, there is no form of compensation within the a-cash, but then you have to close the company. Then it becomes cumbersome to start up again.

Kevni Zulal believes that these are issues that need to be discussed: Should the a-kassas take into account the corona pandemic? And how to handle such situations in the future?

- This puts everything at its peak.

AF is not prepared

The Employment Service has recently had a change of notice with 5,000 employees, so you are already understaffed before the corona crisis, according to Kevni Zulal.

- We try to ensure that everyone who contacts us is reported to a-kassa and we extend financial decisions. But we have not been able to prepare for such a storm.