🇸🇪 Sweden

Sweden is a textbook receiving country that imports youth (especially post-2015 refugee cohorts now entering the labor market in large numbers) to temporarily mask an old-age dependency ratio of 33.4% and median age of 41.1. The 23.7% youth unemployment spike is partly the integration bill coming due — these are imported young workers hitting a saturated entry-level market that AI is simultaneously hollowing out. Native Swedish youth emigration to Norway, UK, and the US compounds this, meaning the most capable young leave while less-mobile immigrants absorb the unemployment statistics. Stockholm's 'tight labor market' narrative is structurally dependent on a flow of low-skill labor into jobs that won't exist in five years.

Sweden is investing in AI infrastructure through the Wallenberg AI/autonomous systems initiatives and hosts major AI labs, but policy remains scattered across a center-right coalition focused on tax credits and 'innovation' framing rather than structural displacement planning. The active labour market policy (ALMP) tradition is robust but chronically underfunded relative to the scale of disruption now hitting white-collar tech and services. There is no coherent national AI displacement strategy — just optimism that Swedish tech firms will pivot fast enough to keep their heads above water.