Swedish news, week 40 in 2025
Immigration news
Migrationsverket promises to start responding to doctoral students' applications (for a residence permit that is) within 30 days if the application is complete (has all the information/documents required). They're also highlighting their new pages for the doctoral students and the institutions welcoming those students and researchers. Both pages are, of course, in Swedish.
As a follow-up to the last week's proposal with making permanent residence permits not permanent anymore, the Swedish Bar Association is loudly doubting whether it's legal, and at least one human rights organization is criticizing it too.
Sveriges Radio
Sveriges Radio
Self-employment / business news
For owners of small aktiebolag: the new budget introduced some simplifications in the 3:12 rules and increased prisbasbelopp, so if you're setting your own salary to maximize the parental/sickness/pension benefits, it's time to review it to ~54k SEK/month.
Reports and data
The Swedes and the Internet, 2025 edition: there's a pretty great summary in English provided by the Swedish Internet Foundation themselves, but here's the summary of the summary + a few things from the Swedish version:
- 97% of Swedes use the internet, 93% daily
- 95% use an e-ID service which means BankID (95%) or Freja (4%)
- Nearly 1 in 4 have refrained from booking a doctor’s appointment because they find the healthcare system’s e-services and apps too difficult to use
- 4 in 10 Swedes aged 8+ use AI tools, mostly ChatGPT
- ⅔ of students and ¼ of workers use AI in studies and work respectively
- “Younger children enjoy using AI tools like a friend”
- Threads is the fastest-growing social media platform in 2025, currently at 7%; Bluesky is at 2%; 13% have left X/Twitter
- 18% of single people are using dating apps, compared with 27% in 2022
SCB (Statistics Sweden, a government agency) has published a small report on the prices of renting an apartment in Sweden. The average increase between 2024 and 2025 was 4.6% (compare with 0.8% in 2016/2017 and 5% in 2023/2024). Surprisingly for probably no one, it's cheaper to rent in smaller municipalities and more expensive in bigger ones. Average price for renting an apartment with one room is 5389 SEK/month, two rooms — 7448 SEK, three rooms — 9118 SEK, and 4+ rooms — 11621 SEK.
SCB has also published some stats on employment (or rather unemployment) of the people who come to Sweden as partners to work visa holders. 90% of the partners who immigrated in 2022 remained in Sweden a year later, and of those, only 58% of men and 34% of women were employed. 3% of men and 7% of women were studying. Half of the children that came with work visa holders were of preschool age.
Hyresgästföreningen (the Tenants' Association) reports about young people's housing situation. Every fifth young adult (aged 20–27) still lives with their parents, and 90% of them would like to move out. This proportion has never been as high, according to the report. A third hesitates to start a family because of the housing market, 8% of youngsters with foreign background have experienced discrimination when looking for housing (double as much as other groups), and only 6% of all young adults think that the politicians are doing enough to solve the housing crisis.
Livsmedelsverket (Swedish Food Agency) reports that Sweden sticks out in a Eurobarometer by having more trust in the food's safety than average in the EU. It's also more important for Swedes where the food comes from. Swedes are less worried about GMOs but more about resistance to antibiotics and environmental pollution. Here is the PDF with the infographics for Sweden specifically.
Last but not least, OECD has published its Integrity Review of Sweden (link). It's in English so I won't retell it much, but yeah, Sweden is not a paragon of low corruption anymore. Some of the recommendations in the report include adopting a lobbying law, establishing transparency rules for expert policymaking groups, lobbying disclosures, banning anonymous and foreign political donations, introducing a risk-based approach to post-public employment rules, and cleaning up public procurement.
At the fika, you might hear about...
The cinnamon bun day, of course! I hope you celebrated. Here's an old meme about it.
