Tidö blames immigration but Sweden’s own figures show its economy and welfare rely on immigrants

Foreign-born residents contribute billions to Sweden's public finances, make up almost a quarter of the workforce and fill nearly half of elderly-care jobs. Sweden depends on their taxes and labour even as Tidö calls immigration a burden.

The four Tidö parties offered the darker account in their joint programme in December 2025. They called the previous government's integration policy failed and linked it to exclusion, poverty, gang crime, a values crisis and increased Islamism. Their plan is to reduce asylum immigration to the EU legal minimum while continuing to welcome highly qualified labour migrants.

The fiscal record is broader than that distinction. A KI study calculated that foreign-born residents as a whole contributed SEK 6 billion more to public finances than they received in 2022. That is a net figure, not a gross tax number. It includes taxes paid, transfers received and allocated public services. The study found a SEK 28 billion surplus among foreign-born residents outside the refugee group and a SEK 22 billion deficit within the refugee group.

Employment gaps are real, particularly for refugees and people with little time in Sweden. But they do not erase the scale of participation. Statistics Sweden counted almost 1.2 million foreign-born people in the workforce in 2024, close to 24 percent of everyone aged 20 to 65 who was working. Among people who came for work, the employment rate was 85 percent, compared with 84 percent for Swedish-born residents.

At the start of the 2026 second quarter, foreign-born workers accounted for 22,000 of Sweden's 30,000 year-on-year increase in employed people, according to SCB. Foreign-born women supplied 12,000 of those additional workers and foreign-born men 10,000.

The welfare system already depends on that labour. Municipalities and regions employ nearly 300,000 foreign-born workers, SKR says. In municipal elderly care, foreign-born staff accounted for about 60,000 of the roughly 90,000 additional assistant nurses and care assistants recruited over the past decade, its workforce review found. Socialstyrelsen puts their current share above 45 percent nationally and about 70 percent in Stockholm County.

The contribution does not stop at payroll taxes and care shifts. SCB counted 105,000 foreign-born entrepreneurs and assisting family members in 2024. A trade review from the National Board of Trade found that an additional migrant employee was associated with 2.5 percent higher service exports to that person's country of origin. Studies reviewed by the agency also linked foreign expert recruitment to productivity gains of 6 to 11 percent two to three years later, with the strongest effects in smaller companies.

Swedish research tells the same story. Universities employed 6,800 internationally recruited researchers in 2025, one quarter of the total and more than half of early-career researchers, according to UKÄ. KTH professor Danica Kragic, educated in Croatia before completing her doctorate in Stockholm, now leads research in robotics, computer vision and machine learning. KTH lists her as director of its Centre for Autonomous Systems.

Foreign-born workers are also 59 percent of Sweden's doctoral employees, 68 percent of cleaners, 64 percent of taxi drivers and 58 percent of bus and tram drivers, SCB records. In 2025, Sweden recognised 16,599 foreign qualifications, including thousands in engineering, healthcare and teaching.

Two thirds of municipalities are expected to lose working-age residents, while all projected national growth in that population is foreign-born. Policy may reduce future migration. The current ledger still counts taxes, companies, research and essential labour supplied by people who moved here. Sweden is already running on their contribution.

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