If I told you that you can increase your chances of having an income above 13 000 sek/month in Sweden by 86 % would you take it?

Maybe you would ask, what do I have to do?

As it turns out, learn Swedish. One of the most interesting stats I have found regarding the Swedish job market is this statistic. Consider two groups. One of the groups is people that have finished Swedish For Immigrants (SFI). Another group of people is people that have not finished SFI. Out of the people that have finished SFI, 66 % have a job that pays above 13 000 kr/month. For people that have not done SFI, 36 % have a job that pays above 13 000 kr/month.

In other words, going through your SFI classes increases your chances of having an income above 13 000 kr/month from 36 % to 66 %. It shows the strength in the SFI education in Sweden. This is a huge change in probability. So why is this?

Breakthrough

I talked with a person teaching SFI. She has been working as a teacher in SFI for decades, helping immigrants to Sweden learn an essential skill, Swedish. When I talked to her, she told me that in general, the breakthrough in the language is usually occurring for the students in SFI D. Meaning, that moment in the learning process where things start to make sense and the student have an easier time communicating with people.

Personally, this is my experience also. The people that I meet that have finished SFI D are generally good at communicating in Swedish.

This is a great start if you want to work in Sweden. If you want to work, it will be very beneficial for you to have some basic understanding of Swedish. So that you can participate in meetings and understand some things that people are saying. But maybe even more importantly, you will understand what people talk about during fika breaks. 🙂

Showing Learnability

Having finished the SFI is also a sign that you are dedicated and interested in learning. You won’t be fluent when you go through the classes, but you have good proof to your employer that you are interested in learning the language.

It is also an argument that you can learn other things quick as well. In the research made by Manpower Group, they found that over 50 % of all employers offer their staff training when they can’t find talented employees. This means having the ability to learn quickly is getting very important in a business landscape that is changing rapidly. If you want to dig deeper into this, see the Manpower test for your Learnability Quotient.

Only a Third Do This

What is astonishing is that only a third of all people that came here as asylum seekers in 2007 did finish all the SFI steps.

Causality

Of course, the results that I mention does not necessarily show causation. It might be the case that people that finish SFI just have some other skill that makes it easier for them to find a job.

So, if you have time to take the SFI courses, I would definitely recommend you to do it. If you are not eligible for SFI for some reason, I would recommend you start out with an app like Duolingo. There are also a lot of other great resources online that you can use.

The stats I have received this info from is this article (in Swedish).

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