Alaa Abdulnabi came to Sweden from Syria in 2016. After a couple of months in Skåne, he moved to Stockholm where he started working in a grocery store. But when the pandemic came, he was afraid of losing his job.
– It felt like all industries were affected. It is clear that people were worried about becoming unemployed.
Alaa Abdulnabi looked for something more stable and finally got a job as a subway driver in Stockholm. In fact, he is far from alone in having found a job after the pandemic. New statistics from the Central Statistics Office (SCB) show that the percentage of employed is increasing and the development has been particularly strong after the pandemic.
Weak Swedish krona
John Andersson is an administrator at Arbetsförmedlingen and according to him there is a shortage of labor in many industries.
– We see that the weak Swedish krona has made the industry go well and hire new staff. In addition, there are plenty of jobs in healthcare, education and care.
The percentage who get a job increases overall and is the highest in almost twenty years. Above all, employment has increased among those born abroad. The percentage of people born abroad between the ages of 16 and 64 who were employed was 63 percent ten years ago. Today it is 71 percent.
– That the group born abroad gets a job may be due to the lack of labour. Many Swedish-born already have jobs, so if you want to find new labor, you have to look in other groups, says John Andersson.
Learn Swedish
In recent years, more and more foreign-born women have also found work. It is gratifying because it is a group that has been far from the labor market. We have worked to reverse that development and it is positive that it seems to be yielding results, says John Andersson.
For Alaa Abdulnabi, work has been an important part of entering society.
– You are constantly under pressure to learn Swedish in order to understand your colleagues and do a better job. I try to pick up new words all the time.