Proportion of open unemployed members in different unemployment benefit funds Per cent of members  Hotel and restaurant workers  Building workers  Commercial employees  Industrial workers  Transport workers  SEKO  HTF  SIF  M unicipal workers  Local government officers  Graduates  Teachers  2002 2003  Government officers  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0  Note. HTF = The Salaried Employees’ Union. SIF = The Swedish Union of Clerical and Technical Employees in Industry. SEKO = The Union of Service and Communication Employees. The building workers’ funds consist of The Building Union’s and the Swedish Painters’ Union’s unemployment benefit funds. The industrial workers’ funds consist of the unemployment benefit funds of the Swedish Metal Workers’ Union, the Swedish Forest and Wood Trade Union, the Swedish Food Workers’ Union, the Swedish Paper Workers’ Union, the Swedish Graphic Workers’ Union and the Industrial Workers’ Union. The number of members in the unemployment benefit funds included in the chart comprised in 2003 around 88 per cent of the total number of unemployment benefit fund members in Sweden. Source: National Labour Market Board. 8  BIS Review 59/2004  3.
the component that is not due to fluctuations in the demand for goods and services in the economy. And this requires completely different measures than those of monetary policy. In particular, it is a question of implementing measures that influence the functioning of the labour market. One indication that the employment problems we are seeing today are largely structural is the big differences in unemployment that exist between different regions and different occupational categories. (Chart 2.) Unemployment figures are twice as high in some regions as in others, and the percentage of people receiving benefit from their unemployment fund is twice as high in some occupational groups as in others. The fact that these differences remain over long periods, even when there is a shortage of skilled labour, suggests that the labour market doesn’t function as well as might be desired. The problems in the Swedish labour market are also underlined by the fact that open unemployment barely came down to 4 per cent when economic activity was at its strongest a couple of years ago. Target deviations and employment How the Riksbank works So, even though monetary policy cannot be expected to have any tangible impact on employment in the long term, short-term effects can arise. This is because a policy aimed at attaining the inflation target may entail changes in interest rates, which temporarily affect demand so that employment rises or falls.