My friend Alexander was lucky. He swapped his native capital for Stockholm in the late 1980s, and soon after finishing language courses he got into a program to stimulate new jobs. The state agreed to reimburse companies that hired unemployed people half their salaries for six months. So Sasha got a job as an accountant at a small firm with a salary of 24,000 kronor (about $3,000). When the government funding ran out, our hero was laid off, but the main thing had been done: he was able to join one of the unemployment insurance funds that exist at every trade union. For a nominal membership fee of approximately $100 a year, the former accountant received the right to unemployment benefits.
According to the law, the fund pays benefits at 80% of the last salary for 300 working days, but this is only the beginning of a long and winding road for the chronically unemployed. When the 300 days flew by and no new job appeared, Sasha was faced with a choice: join the system of "activation" for the unemployed or ask for social benefits. Under "activation," Alexander's household budget stayed the same, while on "social" it decreased almost by half. The labor exchange offered the unemployed person a wide range of courses. One could conduct group conversations with a psychologist who strengthened the self-confidence of listeners left behind by life, or one could study foreign languages or learn a new trade. If you are not interested in intellectual pursuits, go do community work, from sorting second-hand clothes for shipment to developing countries to cleaning graffiti from the neighborhood areas. The "activation" of the unemployed is financed not from the union fund but directly from the budget.
So almost fifteen years passed. Sasha is still unemployed, but nevertheless receives the same 80% of his former salary of 24,000 kronor every month. During this time he learned Italian and German, mastered the basics of programming, became a certified specialist in park management, and acquired the skills of a gilder. "There were a couple of critical moments. Once they wanted to send me to work from Stockholm to Sundsvall, and a second time they forced me to go to a laundry, but I stayed on sick leave until activities I liked appeared," admits the professional unemployed person.
And retirement is already looming ahead. The state insurance fund pushes people who have been receiving unemployment benefits for a long time to take early disability pensions. They are somewhat smaller than when reaching the usual retirement age of 65, and therefore the unemployed, from the age of 40-45, make great efforts to prove to the state their mental and physical strength.