“Attractive communities attract labor”

In Gällivare, the public sector is competing with the mining industry for personnel, and the industry is winning. This is according to Peter Olsson, head of administration at the Children's and Education Administration, who is having great difficulty recruiting qualified personnel for the school. 

Peter Olsson, Gällivare Municipality. Photo: Private.

There is a shortage of trained and licensed teachers in Gällivare Municipality. The municipality has the lowest proportion of qualified educators in the country in preschool, and in compulsory school the proportion is second lowest from a national perspective. The municipality has difficulty recruiting personnel for all welfare professions and unemployment is low.

– We have an overheated mining and industrial sector that attracts with good salaries and benefits. This means that the incentive for university studies is decreasing among our young people. There are few people with post-secondary education for us to recruit and this affects the children – education becomes unequal. In the competition between industry and the public sector, industry wins by a wide margin, says Peter.

There are around 3000–4000 fly-in fly-out workers working in Malmfälten, which Peter believes is a sign of an imbalance in the labor market. Incoming labor also means that municipalities have a reduced tax base to cover the needs of public services.

– Without a workforce that lives and pays taxes here, we cannot build attractive communities. Our biggest obstacle is that we lack housing for those who actually want to work here, we have lost out on recruitment for that reason. Our geography means that it costs a lot to build, with freight and deliveries, which makes new production difficult, says Peter.

The social transformation that is taking place in Malmfälten means increased costs for Gällivare and Kiruna municipalities. Peter therefore believes that all responsibility for housing construction cannot be placed on them. The municipal leaders are working together to get the government to listen.

– We in the north stand for the green transition, the importance of which is being raised at the EU level. But we must also be able to build sustainable communities where people want to live. We need help from the government level with some incentive, an Ore Field exemption that makes it attractive to build here, says Peter.

Through broad collaboration around skills provision in the county, Peter hopes that a united voice will lead to action.

– I hope that together we can influence the government to help the region. If we succeed in creating attractive communities, it will also be easier to recruit. This will not solve itself, says Peter. 

Text: Stina Engman, Brightnest

About the survey

The survey is digital and will be conducted in the fall of 2025, starting in October.

Here you can find more information about the survey.

Kompetensarena Norrbotten is a project that aims to manage the county's increasing skills needs as a result of the extensive industrial establishment in Norrbotten.

The project is run by Region Norrbotten in collaboration with the county's municipalities and business companies, Akademi Norr and the Lapland Municipal Association. It is funded by the European Social Fund, ESF+.