The Swedish Public Employment Service – A Mental Hospice for Seniors

Being unemployed is a challenge. For many, it’s an existential crisis, a feeling of redundancy, and a source of anxiety about the future. But for a senior, it’s not just a crisis—it’s a slow and drawn-out farewell to working life, orchestrated by the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen). A system that doesn’t help you find a job but instead places you in a waiting room for your final career rite: ultimate humiliation.

The Swedish Public Employment Service, this state-controlled colossus with the flexibility of a concrete wall, functions today more like a mental hospice for senior job seekers. Here, you do not survive—you wait for your last day in the labor market, methodically dismantled by regulations, paperwork, and mandatory absurdities. Welcome to your career’s palliative care.

A Place Where Experience Becomes a Liability

The irony of becoming a senior in the job market is that all the experience you’ve gathered suddenly becomes a hindrance rather than an asset. Over the decades, you’ve built up an impressive repertoire of knowledge, competence, and adaptability, but the moment you step into the Swedish Public Employment Service, you are quickly reduced to a number in an Excel spreadsheet.

– "You have an impressive background, but we see that you’re over 60. Have you considered applying for an internship?"

Ah yes, of course. A 63-year-old intern in a reception desk, where you can be trained by a 25-year-old who is an "expert" on the job market—a job market you’ve been part of longer than they’ve been conscious.

Mental Diaper Changing and the Forced Cleansing

Anyone who has stepped into the world of the Swedish Public Employment Service knows that the system is not designed to help but to administer. Administration is the primary goal. Jobs? Well, sometimes someone gets one, but that’s more of an accident than the result of their efforts.

Being connected to the Employment Service as a senior is like having your mental diaper changed and being forcibly washed—whether you want it or not. They don’t care about what you can do, what you’ve done, or what you want. No, you must be matched into a system where jobs are designed for fresh graduates with titles like "Junior Growth Specialist" or "Digital Experience Ninja." And there you stand, with 40 years of experience, trying to explain that you already know the job better than the person meant to train you.

But no, in the eyes of the system, you are an unemployed senior, which means you must adapt. Not the job market. You are the one who must be reshaped to fit the algorithm, and if you refuse? Then come "activity reports," CV workshops, and "individual action plans" that no one actually cares about.

The Waiting Room Before Career Death

For someone who once held a significant role in their profession, it is a painful realization that the Swedish Public Employment Service is the final stop before your career is officially declared dead. Here, you no longer get the chance to be who you were—you are reduced to someone who is expected to be "kept busy." It is not an employment agency; it is an administrative storage unit for those the system no longer knows what to do with.

– "We have a training program for cash register systems! Maybe that would suit you?"

Once a project manager at major companies, now a potential participant in a course on how to ring up a hot dog on a touchscreen.

This is no longer about matching skills with needs. It’s about keeping you occupied until you stop bothering the system. Hopefully, you’ll retire soon, or you’ll give up and start your own business—which, of course, is also a failure for the system, because it then becomes clear that you can create employment for yourself better than the Swedish Public Employment Service can.

The Final Humiliation

The most tragic part is that the Swedish Public Employment Service, in its current form, is not a solution—it is a symptom of a labor market that no longer values experience. In other cultures, older workers are seen as assets, mentors, and role models. In Sweden, they are a burden, a problem to be managed, preferably by forcing them into LinkedIn profile workshops or writing cover letters for jobs they will never get.

And as you sit there, in the waiting room, between mandatory meetings with caseworkers who themselves could use some coaching, you realize that the Swedish Public Employment Service is not for you. It is a place where problems are administered away, not solved. It is where your career’s last breath becomes a statistic in a government report.

This is where you understand that you are no longer seen as a valuable resource but as a number in an equation where the goal is to make you disappear from the unemployment figures, not to get you employed.

What Can Be Done?

The irony of it all is that the Swedish Public Employment Service isn’t even necessary for many seniors. With the right network, experience-based recruitment platforms, and companies that recognize the value of expertise, most could quickly find meaningful work. But instead, they are trapped in the bureaucratic swamp of a system where forms matter more than ability, and where a 63-year-old project manager might be advised to take a course in "digital transformation" led by a 29-year-old.

The solution? Maybe it’s time to create a new way of connecting seniors with jobs—a network where experience is valued rather than discarded. Maybe it’s time for the labor market to recognize that those who built today’s companies, digital systems, and infrastructure still have something to contribute.

Or we can continue pretending that everyone over 60 is a burden—until the day we ourselves sit there and someone asks:

– "Have you considered applying for an internship?"