Elderly care today accounts for 18.4 percent of the municipalities' costs. In its financial report, SKR has highlighted that it is the part of the municipalities' operations that is expected to account for the largest cost increase in the coming years.

- There is simply not enough money at the moment to cope with this in several parts of the country, says SKR's chief economist Annika Wallenskog.

"Elderly care is forgotten"

The state can support municipalities with both general and targeted state grants, but SKR is not satisfied with the distribution of the money. For example, the school receives ten times more targeted government grants compared to the elderly, according to Annika Wallenskog.

- It may be that ministers want to profile themselves. It gives more cred political to invest in school and medical care and therefore elderly care has been a little forgotten, she says.

If you now get more money for the school, can you change your own budget so that the elderly care gets part of the education money?

- The targeted government grants should go to special things, such as books for preschool or further education of math teachers. Then you can't remove your own money from the school, says Wallenskog.

Nor does she believe in the alternative of raising municipal taxes.

- Municipalities do not like to raise taxes, they work close to their residents and do not want them to have to pay more.

New billions for employment

Social Minister Lena Hallengren (S) says that the government sees the need in elderly care and has therefore recently decided to allocate 2.2 billion which will go towards hiring more staff and new training.

- Large grants are being made to regions and municipalities, as much as SEK 29 billion has been donated during this year and I would like to strike a blow for the dialogue that has been held between SKR and the Municipal and where the government has been able to support an elderly care lift. I don't think that's the last thing we see, she says.

Annika Wallenskog is happy with the contribution, but points out that a large part of the money has been spent on managing the corona crisis.

- It is a lot of money and we have had a good dialogue, but it has not looked like this in previous years. And 21 billion of that money is linked to the corona crisis. Next year, the sum will be SEK 16 billion lower, she says.