The council, which is made up of experts from companies and organisations such as Katarina Berg from Spotify, MajBritt Arfert from Ericsson, Masih Yazdi from SEB and Daniella Waldfogel from Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, met for the first time on December 3rd.
“We can see how other countries are actively working to position themselves in the global competition for talent,” Forssell said in a press statement.
The other members of the council are Jessica Häggström from Investor, Fredrik Hillelson from Novare and Ellinor Johansson from Embracer.
“I want Sweden to be in first place in the EU when it comes to talent attraction. By gathering expertise from business, we can take important steps to ensure that Sweden not only maintains but also strengthens its position as a global knowledge hub.”
According to the statement, the business council discussed, among other things, simplified migration processes, collaborations and “prioritised geographical areas”. It’s not clear whether that means attracting highly-skilled workers to geographical areas within Sweden, such as the green industry in the north of the country, or specific areas or countries where potential workers could originate from.
Sweden has in the past decade become a popular destination for labour migrants, who are often attracted by its bustling tech scene, flat hierarchies, work-life balance and until recently relatively lax work permit requirements.
The government has previously said it wants to attract more foreign talent to Sweden, which is needed to plug a skills gap in several of the country's flagship industries such as IT, gaming, engineering and the automotive industry.
However, among immigrants in Sweden, migration processes are often criticised for lacking transparency, with rules changing at short notice. Last year, the government more than doubled the minimum salary threshold, applying the rules to people who had already applied, meaning many applications were rejected despite meeting the requirements at the time of application.
The rules on work permits are set to change again next year, hiking the median salary further.
Recently, the government has announced plans to actively delay the speed at which citizenship applications are processed until new, stricter rules are in place. It is not yet clear whether those stricter rules will be applied retroactively to people who have already applied, if their applications have not been approved by the time the rules come into effect.
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