This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 25th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The movement of immigrants into Scandinavian countries has revealed some problems in those countries labor markets and welfare policies.

Anna Marie Bjorkland is a columnist in Sweden.

We discuss the ways Sweden uses welfare and labor market regulation to the detriment of social cohesion and

assimilating immigrants. How hard is it to get a job in Sweden?

It's not hard if you're well educated born in Sweden and like look and talk nice then

it's not that hard actually Sweden has a very low unemployment rate among

like educated born in Sweden.

All right, so what makes it easy for them and more difficult for other people?

Since we have really high, low salaries, I mean, first of all Sweden doesn't have a first salary like in the law.

We only have the salaries that goes between the unions and the companies

that we're always negotiating the salaries so there's no politicians deciding

what's the salary is going to be or not? But still in fact we do have really high first

salaries, which means that if you don't have proper education, like if you haven't

been to the part of school, which is between from your 1617 till your 1819

Which is called Gymnasium in Sweden if you haven't gone to that school then it's really hard for you to get a first job because people more or less demand that you do this because otherwise to see us untrustworthy and stuff like that.

Because they have to justify the high salary.

Exactly. So and also if you if they don't trust that you're productive enough for this high salary, first high salary because

it's really hard in Sweden to employ anyone for under about 20,000 Swedish in total, which means it's taxes and the salary part.

So if you're not productive enough to work for 20,000 a month, which is about maybe 250 US I think something like that.

That's considerable.

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