Please understand that this is not me bashing Sweden at all, I am just a bit surprised that compensation packages aren’t that great in Sweden and I would like to understand how compensation packages in other countries are seen at. I worked in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and due to my work I know what the packages look like in France, Ireland, Spain and Italy (our headquarters is located in Belgium).

I am from the Netherlands and companies offer additional benefits such as:

• Company cars (very cheap, you pay 100-500 euro per month and it includes private gas/electricity, private parking and all other costs associated with owning cars as well). I know this is limited by Swedish law (you even have to pay for switching the tyres even though this is mandatory…) For example, I drove a Tesla Model S for 180 euro per month and had 0 private costs for this, even when driving the car through Europe.
• By law it is possible to work part-time. A lot of people work 32-36 hours per week. Several governmental organisations even have 36 hours as the maximum hours per week. In Sweden just 40 hours seems the norm.
• 4-12 vacation weeks. Let’s say you have 24 days off per year and you start working in August, you can already take 2 days off in September without any debt as supposed to how it’s working in Sweden (what is up with the strange vacation days thing where you earn them between April and March???).
• Good budgets for education purposes, especialy people with a ‘higher education job’ have between 2500 and 5000 euro per year. I know multiple people who did a masters while working, getting paid time off to study
• Much more team building activities, ski trips and free food (again, this is limited by the Swedish government). When I was living in the Netherlands, I was invited to company and supplier/customer dinners almost every month, and I didn’t have to pay tax for it as it is in Sweden (my former colleagues are laughing when I tell them I need to pay tax on food when I am working late…)
• A 13th or even 14th month of salary
• Getting 100% of your salary when you are sick for a few days. If you are sick for a longer period (for instance a burnout), you get 70-80% but in most cases you get 100% of your salary, meaning there is not obstacle to calling sick

How is this seen in Sweden? I know a lot of people really like unions, but they want to achieve what already is the standard in some other countries in Europe. Is this one of the reasons why it is hard to find higher educated staff (something a lot of entrepeneurs within my network have issues with)? They just get much more salary in other countries and simply move over there.

I really like the working atmosphere here in Sweden, but when it comes to total compensation packages, it is very, very low, especially compared with the costs of living in Sweden. I have a good base salary, but without the additional benefits, at the end of the year I have less more to spend and save, even though my salary is 25% higher than when I moved here from the Netherlands.

Again, I don’t want to insult anything or anybody and I understand there are big differences, but when comparing the average salaries and compensations in Sweden to aruond 7 other European countries, it feels like Sweden stayed in the 90’s and all other countries innovated.

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The original was posted on /r/sweden by /u/ObservationalWizard at 2023-08-07 10:29:13+00:00.