Sweden's Riksbank published an economic commentary on labour market “matching”, finding that the efficiency with which vacancies and jobseekers are paired deteriorated after the 2009 financial crisis and during the 2020 pandemic, then partially recovered in recent years but not back to pre-pandemic levels. The analysis links the incomplete recovery largely to shifts in the composition of unemployment, with a slightly higher share of foreign-born workers in total unemployment and lower average job-finding rates. The commentary frames matching as an input to estimates of equilibrium unemployment and spare capacity, which feed into wage pressure and inflation assessments relevant for monetary policy. It attributes the longer-running change in the unemployed population to large-scale refugee and family immigration from the mid-2000s until the pandemic, and notes that improving matching has not translated into lower unemployment partly because of the economic situation and partly because higher inflows into the labour force have lifted participation. While unemployment is high, employment is also high, and although foreign-born employment has fallen somewhat over the past year it remains clearly above pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that unemployment alone gives an overly negative picture; matching is expected to keep improving as the economy recovers.

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