Worse unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed, higher unemployment, eroded welfare resources and tax cuts that have greatly benefited high-income earners. A new report from Katalys examines what the institute describes as The betrayal of the Sweden Democrats against the workers, unemployed and low-income earners who helped the party to power.
The SD received 29 percent of the workers' votes in the 2022 election and 27 percent among LO members. Among the unemployed, the party became the largest with 30 percent. But the economic policy that the party has subsequently accepted and pursued together with the Tidö parties is, according to the report, in direct conflict with the economic interests of many of these voters.
The report is called Jimmie Blows You! The Sweden Democrats' Anti-Labor Policy . It was written by Tony Johansson, senior advisor at the trade union think tank Katalys and a doctorate in economic history at Lund University. Johansson examines nine areas of economic and welfare policy and compares the SD's previous promises and profile issues with the policies that the party has contributed to during its mandate.
Unemployment insurance that quickly reaches starvation levels
5,621 kronor after tax. That's where a long-term unemployed person can quickly end up. The unemployment insurance fund, which quickly reaches starvation levels, is perhaps the clearest example of the betrayal of the Sweden Democrats.
Ahead of the 2022 election, Jimmie Åkesson called the unemployment insurance fund a red line. The SD would not accept any deterioration. He even said that the party could go into opposition if the Moderates worsened unemployment insurance.
Nevertheless, the compensation will be reduced more rapidly from 1 October 2025: first 80 percent, then 70 after 100 days and then 65 percent. For the long-term unemployed, a bottom level of 5,621 SEK after tax per month awaits.
It doesn't just hit the unemployed. It puts pressure on the entire labor market. When people know that unemployment can quickly mean economic ruin, the pressure to accept lower pay, worse conditions, and more insecure jobs increases. It's the old ironclad wage law in a modern form: weaker security at the bottom reduces bargaining power even for those who still have jobs.
According to the report, LO estimates that many workers lose 1,000–2,700 kronor a month after just one hundred days of unemployment. Childminders, shop assistants, warehouse workers, drivers, personal assistants, cleaners and nurses are among those affected.
Katalys also mentions a 54-year-old man whose compensation fell from 15,500 to 12,600 kronor a month. Another lost 5,000 kronor.
It is difficult to find a clearer contrast between election promise and reality.
From immigration conflict to class conflict
The political conclusion of the catalyst goes beyond individual budget items.
The report describes how the SD has built strong support among workers, low-income earners, the unemployed and people on sickness and activity compensation. At the same time, the party has moved to the right on economic issues and become a central partner for traditional bourgeois politics.
Therein lies the deeper conflict. The SD has led many voters to believe that workers and the vulnerable lose out on immigration. But that picture doesn't hold up well when you examine the economy. Immigration increases population, purchasing power (which otherwise provides more job opportunities, corporate profits and tax payments), labor and production and can, in the long term, strengthen both the tax base and welfare.
The problems grow instead when immigration is combined with austerity, unemployment, low wages, housing shortages and reduced benefits. And it is precisely such a policy that the SD itself has been involved in and made possible during the Tidö collaboration. The party has accepted austerity economic policy, deteriorated unemployment insurance and lower benefits for people far from the labour market, at the same time as unemployment has risen.
This puts pressure on wage earners' bargaining power. When more people compete for fewer jobs and the security systems become weaker, the pressure to accept worse wages and conditions increases. This can then pit people against each other in the labor and housing markets. But the reason is not that immigrants are coming here. The reason lies in how politics organizes jobs, wages, housing and economic security.
According to Red Justice's article The Truth About Immigration , immigrants also create demand, production and the tax base and work in many industries where the Swedish economy needs labor. The economic outcome of immigration is therefore largely determined by employment, investment, integration and distribution policies.
Over half a million became unemployed
At the same time, the labor market deteriorated.
In 2022, 421,000 people were unemployed. By 2025, the number had increased to 510,000. Unemployment rose from 7,5 to 8,8 percent. The EU average was 6,0 percent at the same time. In contrast to the development in the EU, where unemployment fell after 2022, it rose in Sweden.
Katalys does not claim that the government alone created the recession. Instead, the report points to how economic policy responded to it. Assessors such as LO economists considered that fiscal policy was too restrained when Sweden had low growth and high unemployment. OECD calculations also point to a negative GDP gap during the period 2023–2026.
This has implications for demand. A study conducted for the Fiscal Policy Council estimates that the 20 percent of households with the lowest incomes consume almost all of their extra income. For the richest one percent, the corresponding share is around 16 percent.
When the government reduces the income of the unemployed, it therefore quickly hits consumption and business sales. At the same time, giving an equivalent amount in tax cuts to high-income earners does not necessarily compensate for the loss of demand.
No abolished qualifying deduction
The SD made the qualifying period deduction a workers' issue ahead of the 2022 election and promised exemptions for, among others, healthcare, social care and preschool staff. But the issue was not included in the Tidö Agreement and no proposal has been implemented. When the Social Democrats later wanted to abolish the deduction completely, the SD voted no. For workers, the deduction is particularly hard on workers because few can work from home when they are sick. LO calls it a "punitive tax on workers". A remediation worker in the report loses 10,000 kronor a year.
Tax cuts took precedence over welfare
Katalys links the Sweden Democrats' betrayal to both tax and economic policy. The tax ratio fell from 42,9 percent of GDP in 2022 to 40,5 percent in 2025. At unchanged levels, tax revenues would have been around SEK 159 billion higher, although the government alone does not explain the entire difference.
At the same time, the Tidö policy held back demand. The Fiscal Policy Council saw room for a more expansive policy in 2023–2025. Katalys also points out that support for low-income earners has a greater effect on consumption than tax cuts for high-income earners. Nevertheless, those earning 100,000 kronor received around 1,240 kronor more per month in the 2024 budget, while broad groups below the median income received less than 100 kronor. The sick and unemployed, Jimmie's own voter base, received nothing.
At the same time, a monetary sovereign state does not need to first collect every krona in taxes to finance welfare. The limit is set at real resources and inflation. Therefore, the state can keep taxes very low for ordinary incomes and still prioritize jobs, welfare and investments. The broader development since the 1970s is also discussed in Survival – for society and people.
Dental care – SD's betrayal of the young
From 2025, 20–23-year-olds lost free dental care. At the same time, almost one in four people in the lowest income group forgoes dental care for financial reasons, and among the unemployed and those on sick leave, this applies to almost 30 percent. Before the 2022 election, the SD promised high-cost coverage for everyone, but instead supported a reform where young people had to pay more to finance cheaper dental care for the elderly.
This reinforces an already clear class divide. When dental care becomes a matter of budget, people postpone treatment, which can both worsen health and make care more expensive later. An alternative is to treat dental care as part of the common welfare, in the same way as other care. The real limitation here is primarily the availability of dentists, staff and other resources – not that the state must first receive the corresponding kronor in taxes.
19 billion was missing for municipalities and regions
Municipalities and regions were not fully compensated for inflation and new government assignments. Katalys estimates that government subsidies in 2025 were around SEK 19 billion below the level that would have been required if 2023 was used as a comparison year. The calculation also does not fully take into account that an aging population increases the needs in elderly care and healthcare.
The state can create kronor in its own currency. Municipalities and regions cannot. When the state withholds subsidies, they must therefore cut back, raise taxes or worsen operations. This makes state subsidies a direct welfare issue.
This makes an important difference: the state has monetary room for manoeuvre, but municipalities have significantly tighter budget restrictions. If the state withholds subsidies, municipalities and regions are therefore often forced to choose between savings, tax increases and reduced operations.
Families with children saw their support shrink
Child benefit has remained unchanged at SEK 1,250 since 2018. According to Katalys, to maintain the same purchasing power, it would need to be around SEK 1,600. For low-income families, a few hundred kronor a month can determine whether the money is enough for food, clothing and leisure activities.
The SD also actively opposed the increase. During the negotiations on the spring budget for 2025, the party blocked, according to media reports, an additional child benefit of approximately SEK 2,5 billion.
At the same time, the Tidö parties pushed through a ceiling on social assistance. Save the Children warns of increased child poverty, the Red Cross of greater gaps and SKR of poorer school attendance and increased crime. IFAU notes that Swedish studies do not show that reduced benefits in themselves increase employment. The most likely outcome is therefore greater poverty, not more jobs.
Young and sick people also have to pay
The SD's economic choices also hit the young, the sick and others with small margins. Free dental care for 20-23 year olds disappeared in 2025, despite the fact that nearly 30 percent of the unemployed and those on sick leave had already given up dental care for financial reasons.
In the same year, the Tidö parties increased the high-cost coverage for medicines from SEK 2,900 to SEK 3,800. Anyone who reaches the ceiling will therefore have to pay SEK 900 more per year, at the same time as the deductible was increased in steps.
Katalys also examines qualifying period deductions and income support . The pattern is clear: SD has built support among workers, the unemployed, the sick and low-income earners but has contributed to a policy where these groups often pay the most. This reinforces the report's main thesis about the difference between the security rhetoric and the actual distribution of Tidö policy.
With Tidö in power after 2026, things will only get worse!
Vote for red-green hope
If S, V and MP get the mandate to govern Sweden, there is another way: low taxes for most people , tougher taxation of billionaires and large fortunes, investments in jobs and support for the unemployed instead of impoverishment. Rents can be kept down and more housing can be built with the red-greens instead of the cost of housing being driven up with the Moderates' social security rents , and families can have a greater chance of being reunited.
A more expansionary fiscal policy could also strengthen demand, reduce bankruptcies and give small businesses more customers . At the same time, Sweden could invest more in jobs, the environment and green transition – without sacrificing people's freedom, security or everyday economy. It wouldn't solve everything. But it would open the way for a society where politics once again starts to make life better for most people.
Yes RJ, unfortunately that's how you are sure. Time is of the essence. You should be on the editorial pages.
I'm posting this today!
If society is built on solidarity, community, and people's ability to live a dignified life, the right-wing path is fundamentally the opposite.
The Moderates' demands to halve the number of people on welfare while at the same time tightening the requirements for the unemployed to move to where the jobs are risk making an already economically vulnerable society even more unequal. It is not just a question of work – it is also about housing, the economy and people's actual opportunities to change their situation.
At the same time, household debt and housing costs are growing. A large part of household income goes to interest and other costs that do not create any increased purchasing power in the economy. Banks' interest income is thus becoming a burden on households' spending capacity.
The problem is therefore bigger than income support.
A society cannot base its economic policy on the fact that the weakest will bear an increasingly large part of the cost of a development where housing becomes more expensive, debts grow and households' purchasing power is squeezed.
Solidarity is about creating opportunities for people to stand on their own two feet – not about making it harder to survive when the labor market and housing market are already closing doors.
Policies that increase economic inequality and push people into migration, debt and poverty risk creating more disharmony – not a stronger society.
At the same time, Magdalena Andersson has promised that there will be no changes in economic policy if S forms a government. And since Mp and V are so keen to be in such a government, they will have no objections either.
So what is there to hope for?
With the rentierist downward spiral we are in, more and more people will vote for SD out of pure anger, regardless of their politics. See https://gemensam.wordpress.com/2026/05/21/nar-den-etablerade-politiken-vagrar-bygga-landet-vinner-hogerpopulisterna-pa-walkover/ . The angriest wins.
It says something about who dominates the left-wing populist parties that they don't take this seriously. They are simply people who don't want major changes and aren't used to pushing anything hard. They are happy with the world as it is.
The Social Democrats who ruled the country from 1932 were of a completely different kind, says Per Nyström, Gustav Möller's state secretary. They "had all started as agitators in small local contexts (...) But these agitators, through years of social disadvantage, became as hard as flint and knew what they wanted. Nor were their minds blocked by dogmatic beliefs that blinded the then establishment, even the academic establishment (like Andersson's, JW)."
We need such people, people who are prepared to go as far as their ideological counterparts, otherwise we will constantly lose (as Oliver Cromwell put it in the 1600th century in a similar situation).
The grassroots within the red-greens must protest. I believe the most important work for welfare and democracy, peace and green transition is done in protests, uncomfortable conversations with family, friends and at workplaces and by reading about how the state is actually not poor.