Unemployment has fallen steadily throughout the spring as the economy in Sweden as well as in the rest of the world has woken up properly as societies become more and more open.
May was no exception, 411,000 were registered as unemployed at the end of the month, 14,000 fewer than the month before, which as a share of the labor force corresponds to a decrease from 8.1 to 7.9 percent.
Compared with May last year, 28,000 fewer people are out of work today and the reduction is taking place among both domestic and foreign-born, according to the Swedish Public Employment Service's monthly statistics.
More bright spots
Other figures that show that the labor market has brightened:
39,280 people got a job during the month, compared with 24,142 in May last year.
2,272 people were notified of redundancies in May, which is a significantly lower figure than in May last year (8,568), when the corona consequences on the economy were still severe.
But it is also a lower figure than historically normal.
There are almost twice as many vacancies, 107,000, in the Swedish Public Employment Service's site bank as at the same time last year, even though the authority believes that the statistics should be interpreted with some caution.
Darker clouds
Youth unemployment also fell steadily during the spring, down to 51,000 young people aged 18–24 in May, or 10.0 per cent of the youth labor force.
As schools have closed, however, youth unemployment is turning up, just as expected, and was 10.1 percent at the end of last week.
But just as before, the number of long-term unemployed continues to rise. In May, the number increased by a thousand people to 189,000. The Swedish Public Employment Service reiterates the fear that before the end of the year, those who have been without a job for more than a year will exceed 200,000 in number.