Semesterlön and semesterersättning explained, with the 0.43% supplement worked through

They are the three money terms in Swedish holiday law. Semesterlön is holiday pay, the pay an employee receives for days of paid leave. Semestertillägg is the holiday supplement paid on top of normal salary for those days under the monthly-pay method. Semesterersättning is holiday pay in lieu, the cash paid for earned leave that was never taken, usually when employment ends.

All three come from semesterlagen (1977:480), the Annual Leave Act, which gives every employee 25 days of paid leave a year. The Act sets a floor, and collective agreements can improve on it but not go below it. Because foreign employers rarely meet a separate supplement on top of salary, semestertillägg is the line that most often surprises a new client when the first Swedish cost sheet arrives.

The rest of this explainer takes each term in turn, with worked figures based on a monthly salary of SEK 50,000, and shows how an employer budgets for them. Where a collective agreement applies, its holiday clauses should be read alongside the statutory rules set out here.

Public holidays are a separate subject. Sweden’s thirteen statutory red days, four of which are Saturdays in 2026, sit under their own Act, and the three big eves (midsummer, Christmas, New Year) do not feature in it. Those dates are governed by that Act, custom and any agreement, and they do not appear in the holiday-pay calculations below.

The statutory holiday year, the semesterår, runs from 1 April to 31 March unless the employer and employee agree otherwise, and the Act links the number of paid days to the employee’s earning period. Payroll keeps a running balance of paid and unpaid days for each person.

The entitlement is 25 days, counted as days rather than weeks. A new hire who starts partway through the year may therefore have a different mix of paid and unpaid days in the first holiday year, and it is worth asking payroll to confirm the balance in writing so that the employee and the manager work from the same figure.

Days above 20 can be saved, and saved days must be used within 5 years. The first 20 cannot be carried over in the same way, which is one reason Swedish managers plan the summer holiday period well ahead. For a foreign company, the practical result is that leave requests tend to cluster, and project plans should allow for it.

Holiday pay claims do not last forever. Under the Act, a claim for holiday pay lapses after 2 years, so errors should be raised and corrected promptly on both sides.

Under the same-salary rule, sammalöneregeln in § 16 a of the Act, someone on a monthly salary is paid as usual while away and earns a top-up, the semestertillägg, worth 0.43% of a month’s pay for every paid day of leave. This is the method used for most salaried office staff.

Here is the arithmetic for 2026, with stated assumptions: a monthly salary of SEK 50,000, a full year’s entitlement of 25 paid days, statutory rules only, no collective agreement, and the standard employer contribution rate of 31.42%. The supplement is 0.43% × SEK 50,000 = SEK 215 per day, which comes to SEK 5,375 across 25 days. Employer contributions on that supplement add SEK 1,688.83, so the total extra employer cost is about SEK 7,064 a year.

The same formula scales with pay. At the 2026 work-permit salary floor of SEK 34,470 a month, the supplement is about SEK 148 per day, or roughly SEK 3,705 for 25 days before contributions. Only the 10.21% pension slice falls on the supplement for someone 67 or older, while a staff member born in 2003–2007 benefits from the 20.81% youth rate on the first SEK 25,000 of each month’s pay until that relief ends in autumn 2027. Age therefore changes the contribution line, not the supplement itself.

That amount sits on top of the SEK 600,000 annual salary. For the same employee, salary plus 31.42% contributions gives a statutory cost of SEK 788,520, and adding the ITP1 pension assumption brings it to SEK 822,070. Including the supplement, the full example reaches SEK 829,134, and our full-year Stockholm costing lists every line.

The supplement is taxable pay like any other and is reported on the monthly employer return. The payment date depends on the employer’s routine and any agreement, so ask for it to be shown as a separate line on the payslip.

The percentage rule, procentregeln in § 16 b, applies where the same-salary rule does not fit, typically for hourly-paid staff or people whose pay varies from month to month. Holiday pay is then 12% of the pay earned in the earning year.

A simple example shows the mechanics. Assume an hourly-paid employee earned SEK 300,000 during the earning year, with statutory rules only. Holiday pay for a full year’s entitlement is 12% of that, or SEK 36,000, which is spread across the paid days taken. Employer contributions of 31.42% apply to that amount as to any other pay.

Some monthly-paid employees also receive variable pay such as commission or overtime. How those elements feed into holiday pay depends on the rules in the Act and on any collective agreement, so sales roles with large variable components are worth checking specifically before the first holiday year begins. The payroll team should be able to show which method it applies to which pay element.

The choice of method is not a free one for the employer. The Act sets out when each rule applies, and a collective agreement may settle the question for the jobs it covers. A contract that says nothing on the point leaves room for disagreement, so it helps to state in the written terms which holiday-pay method the employer uses. Holiday must be covered in the written information given to every new employee in any case, within the deadlines set by LAS.

Semesterersättning is the cash value of earned holiday that has not been taken, and it is mainly paid when employment ends. The Act does not let an employer simply cancel days that were earned; they have to be paid out.

The amount depends on how many paid days remain and on which holiday-pay method applies to the employee, the same-salary rule or the 12% percentage rule. Saved days from earlier years are included alongside days from the current year, so a long-serving employee who has banked leave can be owed a noticeably larger sum.

Timing matters for cost planning. When an employee leaves after a long notice period, unused days from the current year and any saved days are all settled in the final pay. A Swedish employer giving notice under LAS, which can run from 1 month to 6 months, should therefore ask payroll early for the expected holiday settlement, as it can be a noticeable part of the final month’s cost. Our explainer on LAS dismissal and notice sets out the notice ladder.

The settlement is also reported like other pay. It goes through the final payroll run, attracts employer contributions at the rate that applies to that employee, and appears on the monthly employer return to Skatteverket for the month in which it is paid.

Employees also check the settlement closely. Since claims lapse after 2 years, a clear final payslip that lists unused days and the rate applied saves questions for both sides.

Collective agreements may set higher holiday supplements than the Act, and they can improve on other statutory holiday terms. The 0.43% in § 16 a is a statutory floor, so the rate that actually applies depends on which agreement, if any, binds the employer.

Coverage is wide. According to Medlingsinstitutet, 88% of employees aged 18 to 68 were covered by a collective agreement in 2025, and 83% in the private sector. In firms with 1 to 9 employees the figure was 44%, which is why smaller employers more often work to the statutory rules alone.

Agreements can also fix different holiday years or payment dates. When you compare quotes for a Swedish hire, ask each provider whether it is bound by an agreement, which one, and how its holiday rules differ from the Act. A quote built on the statutory 0.43% where the employer is actually bound by an agreement with a higher rate will understate cost.

Budget three things: the supplement on top of salary, employer contributions on that supplement, and a settlement on exit. For a SEK 50,000 monthly salary under statutory rules, the first two add about SEK 7,064 a year; the third depends on the leave balance at the time someone leaves.

Many finance teams find it easier to accrue these amounts monthly than to absorb them in the months when leave is taken or an employee departs. Dividing the SEK 7,064 from the worked example across twelve months gives an accrual of roughly SEK 589 a month for that employee, before any agreement-based top-up.

Under an employer of record, the EOR calculates holiday pay, supplements and final settlements and reports them on the monthly arbetsgivardeklaration på individnivå. With Employer of Record Sweden, our charge is from USD 560 for every employee each month (approximately SEK 5,550 using the ECB rate published for 24 September 2026), and holiday items appear as separate lines on the monthly invoice alongside salary and contributions.

The monthly payroll cycle is covered in how AGI returns and Swedish payroll fit together, and the employer of record model itself in what a Swedish EOR actually does. The pricing page shows how the fee and pass-through costs fit together.

Q01How many holiday days do Swedish employees get?+

A.The Annual Leave Act gives 25 days a year. Collective agreements may improve on the statutory terms.

Q02What is the Swedish semestertillägg?+

A.A holiday top-up paid with normal salary: by law at least 0.43% of a month’s pay per paid day off, under the same-salary rule.

Q03When is the 12% holiday pay rule used?+

A.Twelve per cent of the earning year’s pay, under procentregeln. It is typically used for hourly or variable pay.

Q04Is unused holiday paid out when someone leaves in Sweden?+

A.Yes. Earned but untaken days are paid as semesterersättning, usually in the final pay.

Q05Can Swedish employees carry holiday over?+

A.Days above 20 can be saved and must be used within 5 years.