Main Features
Today, the Swedish unemployment insurance system is made up of basic insurance and voluntary income-related insurance. The basic insurance is granted to everyone under the requirement of residence: 320 SEK per day are granted to anyone over 20 years who is enrolled at the employment office and is carrying out a job-seeking plan. The voluntary income-related insurance requires the workers to join one of the 36 independent unemployment funds. To become one of the 3.7 million members of unemployment funds a worker must have been employed for at least a month. After one year of uninterrupted membership of an unemployment fund and six months of half-time work, the worker is entitled to receive an earning-related daily allowance up to 80% of his or her normal income (with a maximum of 680 SEK per day). The normal income is the average income during the last 12 months, including days of unemployment. This goes for the first 200 days, after which the rate decreases to 70% until the 300 day, and 70% from day 301-450 (only available for parents to children under the age of 18). After 300 (or 450) benefit days anyone who is still unemployed can obtain a place in the "Jobb- och utvecklingsgarantin" (Job and development guarantee) labour market programme.
As declared by IAF in 2006 approximately the 90% of the workers were members of an unemployment fund. 553 000 workers received benefits in some moments of the year, and the unemployment funds paid them 29,9 billion SEK, which means 54 069 SEK each as average. In facts, also a form of intra-fund solidarity can be traced up: funds usually do not compete for members, as like the trade unions they usually refer to a “fund organizational area”, and costs are covered in solidarity by all the funds, so that membership fees are quite the same for every sector. Moreover, the funds’ costs are mainly paid by governmental grants: in 2006 only 9.4% of the unemployment benefits were financed by membership fees.
Some unions also promote Collective complementary insurance to better cover the growing quota of unemployed who receive less than the 80% of their previous wages, because the maximum compensation level has not been raised as the wages, and because unemployment between average- and high-earners in growing. In fact, in 2005 45% received in average the 60% of previous wages, excluding the 13% granted only of basic benefits. The collective complementary insurances are fully financed by individual insurance fees, by each organization in its segment; that might brought to have very costly insurances in sectors with high unemployment rates.
Read more about this topic: Unemployment Benefits In Sweden
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