Europe: Who Hails Sweden?
Since Sweden seems to be the topic of the day…
An increasing number of Swedes do not recognize the socialist paradise-cum-economic wunderkind of Guardian headlines. The model is showing “visible cracks,” says Klas Eklund, the Stockholm-based chief economist of SEB bank. Among them: the lack of incentive to work, resulting in a real unemployment rate roughly three times the official 6.3 percent; the failure to foster entrepreneurship (Swedes are the Europeans least likely to consider starting businesses), and the “total inability to handle the integration of immigrants,” who face an unemployment rate one third higher than native Swedes. The disparity is among the widest in Europe.
[...]As in other European countries, work (or the lack of it) is at the heart of Sweden’s present dilemma. Private-sector productivity has grown phenomenally in recent years, behind only South Korea and Ireland. But Sweden’s employment profile is decidedly mixed. Lennart Erixon, an economist at Stockholm University, points out that only Turkey has experienced a steeper decline in the rate of work-force participation than Sweden since 1990. Counting the hidden unemployed, including those on disability, paid leaves or “perpetual students” at tuition-free universities, more than 20 percent of the working-age population is out of work, according to some estimates.
