Sweden’s jobless rate up for a second month

Bloomberg

Swedish unemployment rose for a second month in December as job seekers flocked to the labour market at the tail-end of a long economic expansion.
The seasonally-adjusted rate rose to 6.4 percent, up from a revised 6.2 percent in November, Statistics Sweden said. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a rate of 6.2 percent in December.
Swedish unemployment remains above its pre-global financial crisis levels and above the rates seen in neighboring Denmark and Norway.
Sweden has seen a large inflow of workers, spurred by record immigration, which has been adding to labour force as employment has grown. Sweden has added more than 100,000 jobs over the past year, while the labor force has grown by about 90,000.
Still, economists have been cutting their 2019 growth forecasts for Sweden, and there was some recent bad news from the business sector, which saw hiring plans fall in December to their lowest level since 2014. After the longest political standoff in its history, Sweden finally got a new government this week, consisting of the Social Democrats and the Green Party and with the support of two centrist parties.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has placed job creation high up on the agenda, but has abandoned a previous goal of reaching the lowest unemployment rate in the EU by 2020.
The country’s central bank expects unemployment to stabilise above 6 percent over the next 12 months.