Different Opinion

Despite the rapid growth of Swedish GDP, the employment situation fails to improve. Day before yesterday, Statistics Sweden released figures pointing to a shrinking labour-market during the last quarter of 2004, while production was lifted (although at a slightly slower pace) by a strong productivity development. Yesterday, the Labour Market Admin. reported disappointing news for the February unemployment, up 0.7% to 8.5% in total (forget about the headline figure of 5.5%, that's just cosmetics). Now the unemployment is everyones argument. Head of the nat'l union wants more fiscal stimulus and a more dowish central bank, pundits and politicians on the right want to reform the structure of the labour market. At any rate, it's good to see that they all seem to be troubled over the severe problem that the Swedish unemployment represents.