The labor shortage – a crisis that requires mobilization

The alarms about the flows from welfare jobs to heavy industry are coming in close in Norrbotten. The shortage of personnel is already hitting both healthcare and schools hard. – It is a crisis but society is not treating it as a crisis. Who has the risk analysis? said Anna-Maria Lundkvist Monroy, County Administrative Board, during the Competence Council meeting at Boden Business Park.

The need for labor for the new industrialization of Norrbotten has received a lot of attention in the media. But behind the scenes, the problems with staffing healthcare, schools and social services have grown. The other week, Kiruna Municipality was forced to impose a safety shutdown in a school and sent the children home because there were no teachers.

This in itself is a threat to sustainable societal transformation and risks becoming a vicious spiral. We need to grow to solve many of our societal problems. But how attractive is it to move to a place where society has difficulty delivering both cancer care and schooling?

– The industrial companies will solve this. The biggest challenge for Norrbotten is not recruiting key skills and specialists, the companies will handle that. But how do we recruit nannies, nurses, care assistants, taxi drivers? said Per-Anders Ruona, section manager at the Swedish Public Employment Service, when the Competence Council met to identify Norrbotten's challenges and try to find solutions.

In Norrbotten, the “labor reserve”, people who are unemployed for various reasons, amounts to approximately 5000 people. Even if they all managed to train for a shortage workforce, it would not be enough.

– We have the second lowest unemployment rate in the country. We have a demographic challenge that is unique. Huge investments in this. Unemployment will continue to fall. We will not escape the lack of people. It will be very tough ten years ahead, said Ruona.

Free fall

The situation in the Ore Fields has gone from “patching and repairing” to free fall. The mining giants can offer in-house training and jobs with high salaries. These attract workers from welfare professions. But the problems will spread as people retire, and the municipalities will take the first and biggest hit.

The Competence Council saw a need to receive attention and support from the government and parliament.

– It is a crisis but we are not treating it as a crisis. We treated the pandemic as a crisis, then we mobilized. We treated Ukraine as a crisis, then we could provide housing for 42 Ukrainians on a board. Now no one has a clear picture of the situation. I wish a proper risk analysis had been done, like when we reported every week to the government during both crises. We have a shortage of perspectives – some think housing is most important, others the labor reserve – but who has the risk analysis? We need to pick up the most important parameters! What happens if we don't get people here?, said County Administrative Board representative Anna-Maria Lundkvist Monroy.

– We need to wake up the decision-makers. Make an order: “We need this.” The school closure is a first sign, there will be more to come.

Standing from left: Helena Hansson, Boden Municipality, Stina Almkvist, Norrbotten Region, Per-Anders Ruona, Public Employment Service, Börje Lindqvist, Luleå Municipality, Sara Kandel, Akademi Norr, Ulf Hägglund, Swedish Lapland, Anna-Maria Lundkvist Monroy, County Administrative Board, Björn Markinhuhta, Luleå Municipality, Erik Ranängen, Swedish Construction Companies, Linda Rönnbäck, Technical College, Matilda Wikberg, Norrbotten Region, Johanna Pettersson, Norrbotten Region, Stina Johansson, LTU, Håkan Johansson, Piteå Municipality, Caroline Stafström, Norrbotten Region
Seated from left: Martin Bergvall, Academy North, Vera Westerlund, Femkanten's Adult Education, Leif Pääjärvi, Education North, Stina Karlsson, Norrbotten's municipalities.

Several members of the skills council saw difficulties in financing housing construction, regulations and other bureaucracy as an obstacle to meeting the challenges we face.

– We are facing opportunities, the challenges must not overshadow this. We are doing good things but we need to increase volume. Northern Sweden would need to be granted a state of emergency to work on new initiatives to accelerate this, says Leif Pääjärvi, Education North.

Erik Ranängen, the Swedish Construction Association, agreed. He emphasizes that we must emphasize that it is in the interest of all of Sweden that Norrbotten's green transition does not fall through the cracks.

– We must make decision-makers understand that we are not just doing this for our own sake. Contributing to the transition also benefits the rest of the country. There is a lot of prosperity that Sweden will lose if we do not succeed, said Ranängen.

How then will we be able to find workers? Here are the Skills Council's thoughts.

Take care of the Ukrainians

How are we going to get them to stay? Swedish language education is a must, but refugees from Ukraine do not have the right to language education according to the mass exodus directive. That issue has therefore ended up with the voluntary organizations. The municipality of Boden is highlighted as a good example, they have gone in and mapped the skills of the Ukrainians and considered it a municipal responsibility, even though that obligation does not exist.

Take advantage of immigrants' skills

There are many immigrants with high skills, but they are largely moving away from here. How can we take better care of graduates at SFI? Validation is an important instrument for taking advantage of refugees' skills. Every person has potential, but they need to be able to enter business and work and at the same time learn the language and the social codes of the workplace. Here we also need to equip employers to be more open. In many cases, this is where the skills reserve is located and there are private companies that have succeeded very well in this.

Get students to stay

The students are already here, but 70% move out of the county after completing their education. We need to show our students what opportunities are available in Norrbotten's municipalities.

Attracting guest workers to settle down

There are 800 construction workers here from Ireland alone. They have families back home, work and send money home. What can we do to entice them to move here? Show them the opportunities here, with cheap childcare and jobs for both parents. There are many other groups of guest workers that we should try to get to settle here. The Swedish Construction Companies organization is planning initiatives in this area.

Exhibitions

Here we need to work broadly and at the same time do the right things and ensure that those we meet actually have an interest. Can we meet Dutch people in connection with the skating competition in Luleå in February? Can we meet the labor reserve in those parts of the country that have much bigger problems than us with unemployment? Can we work with targeted sightseeing trips? 

Norrbotten will be represented at a major recruitment fair in Utrecht next year. Several participants in the Competence Council highlighted that we need to think “Swedish Lapland” and be strong together, rather than each municipality doing its own thing.

Fix the internship bottleneck

In Norrbotten, it has become difficult for both healthcare professionals and electricians to get out to the workplace and do their internships, which often results in them not being employable or dropping out of their education. The Competence Council called for both more resources for organizing internships and also financial incentives to act as supervisors.

Fix the housing shortage

The lack of housing is in itself a bottleneck. There is no housing, there is no capacity to accommodate new Norrbotten residents. The systems are not keeping up, old plans limit the possibilities and it can be difficult to finance construction projects. The Competence Council called for lobbying efforts against the new government and the Riksdag, financial instruments and a greater “sense of urgency”.

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The North Sweden Green Deal is an initiative to realize a sustainable societal transition, in the wake of the new industrial establishments.

The project is run by Region Norrbotten and Region Västerbotten together with a number of other actors. It is financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Within the framework of the North Sweden Green Deal, the reference group, the Skills Council, is taking a closer look at how the skills supply issue can be untangled.