Where in Sweden is unemployment rising the most?

As many as 363,000 people were registered as unemployed in the second quarter of 2025, up from 344,000 in 2024, according to the latest statistics from the Swedish Public Employment Service. 

The biggest rise in unemployment was in Västerbotten, where the number of people registered as unemployed shot up from 4,992 in the second quarter of 2024 to 7,417 in the second quarter of 2025. 

“The largest increase has occurred in Västerbotten, where extensive notices, layoffs and bankruptcy in battery manufacturing have had a major impact on the labour market,” Marcus Löwing, the service’s labour market analyst, said in a press release. Uppsala county also saw a sharp rise in unemployment. 

Only four counties saw the level of unemployment fall: Dalarna, Gotland, Gävleborg, and Norrbotten.

The county of Skåne had the highest level of unemployment, with 9 percent out of work, while Norrbotten in the far north had the lowest, with only 3.8 percent of the workforce unemployed. 

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A report from the National Institute of Economic Research, also published on Wednesday, which measures unemployment differently, predicted that unemployment would start to decline from the start of next year, when the economy is expected to come out of its slump. 

The institute reduced its forecast for Sweden’s growth in 2025 from 1 percent to 0.7 percent, a reduction it blamed on Swedes’ lower than expected consumer spending. 

“We have for a long time been wrong on household consumption, I must admit,” the institute’s head of forecasting, Ylva Hedén Westerdahl, said. “It is not growing as fast as we believed it would. Perhaps that’s not so strange when you consider that prices have risen by 30 percent in three years and that we have had higher interest rates.”