Forecasts by Other Actors

There is a wide range of actors engaged in forecasts and personnel projections, ranging from public education and training coordinators to private branch organisations. The purpose here is only to mention some of these organisations and their contributions in terms prognoses of qualification needs. This could be considered as an indication of the type of information available as a compliment to the projection work undertaken within SCB and AMV.

Forecasts from a business perspective

The Swedish Business Development Agency (NUTEK), is Sweden's central public authority for industrial policy issues assigned with the task to promote sustainable growth throughout the country. NUTEK is also engaged in projecting labour market trends, which are frequently mentioned in the discussion concerning future qualification needs. ‘Utbildning för sysselsättning eller arbetslöshet’ (Education for employment or unemployment) published in 1999, presents a judgement of the qualifications required by the business sector until 2010, in order to maintain current growth. The estimated demand is presented as a share of the total labour force.

NUTEK puts business life developments in focus, the calculations refer to relatively aggregated education groups and highlight some groups that are important within the export industry, and the public sector is left outside the model. The trends regarding labour demand are based on statistics from Statistics Sweden.

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise represents 48 member associations and approximately 57.000 member companies with more than 1.5 million employees.

The confederation’s assignment from its member companies is to enhance the understanding of companies' reality and to work for the best possible conditions for all companies in Sweden to operate and grow. Swedish Enterprise publishes ad-hoc

4 Health care comprises of health, dental care and support service sectors

reports with the objective to improve the understanding of requirements and demands on tomorrow’s labour market from the perspective of private employers.

The majority of studies are based on interviews with the member companies. The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (2001b) presents a study composed of three separate parts. The first part was an inventory of the supply from education with focus on business administration, economics, technology, and inter-disciplinary IT training, and it compares 1991/92 and 2000. A quantitative analysis of the demand for higher educated labour within IT/telecom and traditional industry, based on telephone interviews with 300 company managers, constituted the second part, and thirdly, there was a workshop with representatives from different companies, discussing requirements, needs and desires.

Industry sector specific personnel projections

The National Agency for Education (NAE) is responsible for the Swedish work with personnel prognoses for childcare, schools, and adult education. Statistics Sweden, commissioned by the NAE, collects the data. There is also and a reference group, with a broad representation from the Swedish Association of Local authorities, the National Agency for Higher Education, the teachers’ unions, some universities and university colleges, and a few municipalities, connected to the work. Over the years that the NAE has been responsible for the work, prognoses for a number of personnel categories have been made. These prognoses have been presented in various publications. The first prognoses were comprehensive and the more recent more specific.⁵ They are carried out according to essentially two main aspects. The first part is concerned with calculating the teacher demand, which in turn is divided up into total demand, recruitment demand, and graduation demand. The second aspect calculates the teacher supply; with the assumption that today’s dimensions of teacher training will remain the same in the future. By comparing the estimated teacher demand and supply, a picture emerges of the balance situation in the future.

The first point of comparison between demand and supply lies 5 years into the future.

The basis for the NAE teacher prognoses is provided by a directory of teaching staff providing essential basic information about the existing teaching corps in the form of gender and age composition. This makes it possible to calculate how long teachers stay in the profession and the percentage of newly graduated teachers who begin to work as teachers. The main users of the prognoses are the Ministry of Education and Science, the universities and university colleges with teacher training programs, and the municipalities.

5 Teacher shortage or teacher surplus? (1996), The need to educate teachers in general subjects (1996), Teachers in special schools for the mentally handicapped (1997), The need to educate teachers in vocational subjects (1998), Teachers in primary-secondary school and in practical and artistic subjects in upper secondary school (Report no. 151, 1998), Preschool teachers and after-school instructors. (1998), Teachers in upper secondary after-schools and upper secondary adult education (2001)

The Swedish Federation of County Councils represents the Governmental, professional and employer-related interests of its members – the county councils.

The county councils are responsible for matters of common interest, which are too extensive and too costly for individual municipalities to manage. This mainly concerns health care, which is the county councils’ major task, but also some other areas⁶. The federation carries out personnel forecasts for the heath care sector with a couple of years’ interval. The most recent report was published 2001 and the forecast period extends over 2010 (Landstingsförbundet 2001). The purposes are to analyse the interest for certain education and the need for education places from a national perspective. The forecasts are based on current personnel data and assumptions about future recruitment possibilities.

The Swedish Association of Local Authorities is an association of Sweden's 289 primary local authorities. The municipalities in Sweden are legally responsible for issues such as social services, which include childcare, care of the elderly and social security benefit matters, the school system, and health and environmental care.

Since 1996 the association has published several reports addressing the recruitment need within the municipal sector, but two studies published within the report series

‘The municipalities and the personnel’, stand out as the main ones. The first of them is a study from 1996 forecasting the gross personnel flows between 1996 and 2005.

The second, published in 1998, is an in depth study of the situation within the most personnel intensive activities until 2010. The estimations are based on calculations of recruitment and education needs and the attractiveness of the municipalities as a work-place. The calculations in the most recent publication are based on a long-term projection prepared by the association in 1998, which uses SCB population statistics.

6 Dental care, public transport, culture, higher and upper-secondary education, tourism, the environment, support for business and industry and regional growth and development.

Table 2: Summary of recent forecasts accounted for in this report

Fores by Statistic Sweden and National Labour Market Administration Regular forecasts

Actor Publication Frequency Main reference

information Most recent

publication Forecast

period Type of information

SCB Trends and

Annually Questionnaire to 7600 employers

outlooks 2 reports per

year Interviews with 10.000

employers August 2002 2003 Sector outlooks;

Labour supply and

employers Spring 2003 2005 Regional labour market trends Ad-hoc forecasts

Actor Publication Main reference

information Publication

year Forecast

period Type of information AMS The jobs of the

future’

Population and Labour force

sur-vey, interviews, etc 1998 2010 Necessary outflow from education in order to match future demand

AMS

sur-vey, interviews, etc 2002 -2003 2015

Sector specific personnel supply trends within construction, health care, and teaching

Forecasts by other actors Growth/business perspective

Actor Main reference information Type of information

NUTEK SCB data, assumptions regarding future qualification requirements. etc

Business sector qualification demand on aggregated education group level Confederation of

Swedish enterprise

Interviews and surveys among the confederation’s member companies

Analysis if the requirements and demands on tomorrow’s labour market

Personnel projections

NAE SCB data personal statistics, assumptions regarding future qualification requirements, etc

Personnel prognoses for childcare, schools, and adult education

The Swedish Federation of County Councils

SCB data personal statistics, assumptions regarding future qualification requirements, etc

Recruitment need within the county council sector

The Swedish Association of Local Authorities

SCB data personal statistics, assumptions

regarding future qualification requirements, etc Recruitment need within the municipal sector