What happened
In an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter, eleven organizations propose five measures to reduce the employment gap between domestic- and foreign-born individuals. The authors refer to figures showing that 61 percent of business leaders state that religious or cultural attributes of a job applicant negatively affect them. Just over 20 percent of business leaders also report that names from Africa or the Middle East negatively affect their assessment. The organizations demand, among other things, increased discrimination compensation, faster validation of foreign qualifications, and opening the establishment program to more women. They also want to see more vocationally oriented SFI and long-term funding for civil society's efforts.
Our analysis
Politicians constantly compete to demand more "individual responsibility" and tougher measures against new Swedes. But when six out of ten managers openly admit to screening out people based on culture or religion, that rhetoric falls apart. The problem is not that new Swedes lack the will to work. The problem is a labor market where prejudices are allowed to guide recruitment without consequence.
Raising discrimination compensation is a necessary first step. Today, damages for discrimination are so low that companies can treat them as an insignificant administrative cost. In practice, it costs nothing to screen out a qualified person with the wrong surname.
Instead, the real price is paid by society. When trained doctors drive taxis and engineers get stuck in years of red tape, Sweden loses billions in untapped expertise. It is time to stop asking what integration costs, and instead ask what structural racism costs the country every day.
Explained
The establishment program (Etableringsprogrammet) is a state package of language education and internships via Arbetsförmedlingen for certain newly arrived immigrants who have been granted a residence permit in Sweden.