Northern Sweden is changing

Luleå Consulting firms are setting up new offices, real estate companies want to build homes, education companies are setting up new vocational training courses, municipalities are exploring whether the state can contribute to the adaptation of society, and there are investigations into how to secure the supply of electricity.

The new investments in green industry in northern Sweden offer both hope for the future and challenges for a part of the country that has traditionally supplied the rest of the country with labour, raw materials and energy. Companies are now fighting for labour in the north.

"If you are a former resident of Luleå, Skellefteå, Piteå or Boden and the surrounding area who chooses to move back home to join one of our new offices in the north, we are offering a relocation bonus of SEK 50,000 to support you in everything a move entails," writes the consulting firm Consid on LinkedIn.

The company, which has 27 offices around Sweden, established a new office in Luleå last autumn, where it will hire 50 new employees over the next two years.

Recently, the machine manufacturer Zeppelin-Cat started a cooperation with the training provider Utbildning Nord to cope with the necessary recruitment of mechanics for the mining industry in Norrbotten.

- We need to get a lot more people in Norrbotten. Hundreds of billions (SEK, in EUR: tens of billions)will be invested in northern Sweden and Norrbotten is at the forefront of the green transition in fossil-free mining and steel production. Norrbotten has a lot to offer for those who want to move to the jobs that are created here in the north, says Leif Pääjärvi, education strategist at Utbildning Nord in Övertorneå.

Over the next few years, around EUR 100 billion will be invested in northern Sweden, of which EUR 70 billion in Norrbotten County. Forecasters estimate that the population will increase by 100,000 inhabitants.