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The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it assesses whether the school system can adequately identify and manage mental health problems of children and youth. Second, it examines the role of transition services offered e.g. by the public employment service and local employment services to help vulnerable youth enter the labour market. It discusses strategies to prevent mental health problems in schools and the effectiveness of school health services in dealing with mental disorders. It reviews policies directed at identifying problems among early school leavers and young adults who are not in education and not in employment and who are generally at a greater risk of developing mental disorders. The chapter also examines the employment programmes to boost labour market demand for vulnerable youth and addresses the main problems in the disability benefit system for young people.

This review is the first in a new series on the skills and labour market integration of immigrants and their children. With 16% of its population born abroad, Sweden has one of the larger immigrant populations among the European OECD countries. Estimates suggest that about half of the foreign-born population originally came to Sweden as refugees or as the family of refugees and Sweden has been the OECD country that has had by far the largest inflows of asylum seekers relative to its population. In all OECD countries, humanitarian migrants and their families face greater challenges to integrate into the labour market than other groups. It is thus not surprising that immigrant versus native-born differences are larger than elsewhere, which also must be seen in the context of high skills and labour market participation among the native-born. For both genders, employment disparities are particularly pronounced among the low-educated, among whom immigrants are heavily overrepresented. These immigrants face particular challenges related to the paucity of low-skilled jobs in Sweden, and policy needs to acknowledge that their integration pathway tends to be a long one. Against this backdrop, Sweden has highly developed and longstanding integration policies that mainly aim at upskilling immigrants while temporarily lowering the cost of hiring, while other tools that work more strongly with the social partners and the civil society are less well developed and need strengthening.

Today, 34% of the population of Gothenburg, Sweden, was born outside of the country or has at least one parent born abroad. The city is growing at a fast pace: 4 400 new residents registered in 2016. Newcomers account for the bulk of demographic growth, of which 12 858 refugees settled in the city between 2010 and 2016. However, migration is not a new phenomenon in Gothenburg, with nearly 41.7% of migrant residents having arrived more than 10 years ago. The Gothenburg municipality has a significant track record in managing the impact of migration on local demand for work, housing, goods and services, cultural and linguistic diversity, and other parts of daily life. This report presents the way Gothenburg municipality and its state and non-state partners are addressing migrant integration issues and opportunities. It compiles data and qualitative evidence on how local integration efforts are designed and implemented within a multi-level governance framework.

This case study presents an approach to inspiring women to consider business creation and self-employment. It describes the project’s objectives and the rationale for launching it. The case study describes how the project works and presents data to show its impact. The key challenges faced in implementing this project are discussed along with the conditions for transferring it to another context.

Average inflation in Sweden has been one of the lowest among European countries since the mid-1990s. Three supply-side factors help to explain this phenomenon, all related in some sense to increased global integration. First, a shift towards imports from low-cost producing countries has resulted in falling import prices. Second, deregulation and increased product market competition with foreign companies entering the market has led to price falls in some sectors, notably in retailing. Third, wage growth has lagged productivity and kept unit labour costs down. This chapter reviews these factors and analyzes the policy options for the central bank.