Potential Labour Mobility between the Baltic States and Sweden

Abstract

After the long period of high unemployment in the 1990s, the Swedish labour market is now recovering quite rapidly. Since 1998, there is an increasing shortage not only of certain types of highly skilled labour but also within social services and the building and construction industry. This concerns particularly the larger Swedish city regions. Together with the ageing population, which reduces the relative supply of domestic labour force, there is an emerging debate on the need for immigrating labour to the Swedish labour market. In this debate, it is stated that the potential immigration to metropolitan regions is quite large in a future situation with free mobility of labour and entrepreneurs between the Baltic states and the other EU-countries. Initially, the major driving push factor is expected to be the lower income level and the prospects of much higher income and material welfare. The strength of this factor is to a large extent decided by the economic growth and how welfare will be distributed among candidate countries. If both large professional groups and people living on transfers expect a continuing improvement of their and their families living conditions at home, this reduces the potential emigration.