Swedish employer of record basics: who employs your hire and what you keep

An employer of record lets a foreign company put someone on a Swedish payroll without first forming a Swedish company. Under the Employer of Record Sweden model, your chosen candidate signs an employment contract with us, and from that point we carry the legal employer role. You decide who to hire, what they work on and how their performance is judged.

Behind that sits a monthly routine that the employer of record carries out as employer. It holds an employer registration with Skatteverket, deducts preliminary income tax using the official skattetabeller (tax tables), pays arbetsgivaravgifter (employer social contributions) and files an arbetsgivardeklaration på individnivå, usually shortened to AGI, for every employee every month.

Most foreign employers first meet these Swedish mechanics at this point, so it helps to know them by name. For 2026 the contribution rate stands at 31.42%, charged on every krona of gross pay. Smaller employers, those turning over no more than SEK 40 million, send in the AGI and settle what it shows by the 12th after each payday month, shifted to the 17th for January and August payments, per Skatteverket’s filing calendar.

What you receive in return is an invoice covering salary, contributions, any agreed pension and benefits, and the service fee, plus the payslips and filing records behind it.

The employer of record is the legal employer, and you keep control of the work itself. The employer of record holds the contract of employment and the payroll registration, and it answers for the duties Swedish law places on an employer. Your company agrees commercial terms with the employer of record through a service agreement and directs the employee day to day.

On the employer of record’s side of the line are the obligations that Swedish statute attaches to an employer: written terms under lagen om anställningsskydd (LAS, the Employment Protection Act), holiday under semesterlagen, a fortnight of sjuklön (employer sick pay) at the start of any illness, and a report to Försäkringskassan if someone is still off sick on day 15. Termination letters and any negotiation required under medbestämmandelagen (MBL, the Co-determination Act) also go through the employer of record.

On your side are the choices that make the job what it is:

• selecting the candidate and agreeing the salary level and start date
• setting objectives, reviewing output and approving leave requests
• supplying equipment, systems access and any expense budget
• deciding, with the employer of record, when a role should change or end

Some duties still reach you in practice. Arbetsmiljöverket reminds employers that responsibility for the work environment continues during remote work, and a client that shapes the home-office setup and working hours has a hand in that. Intellectual property also needs attention: under upphovsrättslagen § 40 a, copyright in software written as part of the job passes to the employer unless agreed otherwise, so the service agreement should say how those rights move on to you.

Collective agreements (kollektivavtal) set much of what statute leaves open in Sweden, including pay floors, occupational pensions and several insurances. There is no statutory minimum wage. Medlingsinstitutet, the national mediation office, counts minimum-pay clauses in about 300 of some 650 central agreements; its 2025 figures put coverage at 88% of the workforce aged 18 to 68, with private employers at 83%.

For an EOR hire, the key question is whether the employer of record itself is bound by an agreement that covers the role. If it is, the agreement’s pay scales, working-time rules and pension terms apply to your employee. For white-collar staff under the Svenskt Näringsliv and PTK framework, the usual pension is ITP1. Pensionsmyndigheten describes a two-tier premium: 4.5% on pay up to 7.5 income base amounts (a monthly SEK 52,125 in 2026) and 30% on anything over it. Every krona of premium is then loaded with a further 24.26% särskild löneskatt, the tax Sweden levies on pension costs.

Agreements also carry insurances that statute does not require, and they can set holiday supplements above the statutory 0.43% per day. If there is no agreement in place, you still need to decide how pension and insurance will be handled, because Swedish candidates tend to compare offers against agreement terms. Coverage is thinner in very small firms (44% in companies with 1 to 9 employees), so asking the employer of record which agreement applies is part of any first conversation.

A practical way to handle this is to treat the agreement as part of the job specification. Before you make an offer, find out which agreement the employer of record applies to comparable roles, which pay scale or minimum level it sets for the position, and whether overtime is paid or built into salary. Senior staff often agree that overtime is included, but that choice has to be recorded in writing and should match what the agreement allows.

Take SEK 50,000 a month in Stockholm: before pension or fees, the 2026 statutory bill for the employer is SEK 788,520 over twelve months. That figure is SEK 600,000 of salary plus 31.42% arbetsgivaravgifter (SEK 188,520). It assumes a 30-year-old employee on a full year, with no benefits in kind and neither of the reduced contribution rates applying.

Adding the ITP1 assumption, 4.5% pension (SEK 27,000) plus 24.26% special payroll tax on it (SEK 6,550), raises the annual cost to about SEK 822,070. Semesterlagen’s holiday supplement, the semestertillägg, works out at 0.43% of a month’s pay per holiday day; across 25 days, and with contributions, it adds SEK 7,064 and takes the total to roughly SEK 829,134.

On top comes the service charge from USD 560 for each employee each month, about SEK 5,550 at ECB rates published on 24 September 2026. The employee’s side looks different: on the same salary, final income tax and fees come to SEK 128,646 for the year, leaving net pay of about SEK 39,280 a month. Behind that net figure: a 30-year-old living in Stockholm who has left the Church of Sweden, earns nothing else, and pays 30.55% local tax and a 0.07% begravningsavgift. A breakdown sits on the pricing page.

Permanent employment, tillsvidareanställning, is the default form under LAS § 4, and most EOR contracts start there, often with a probation period. Provanställning can last up to 6 months; either side may end it before it expires, and if nobody does, it turns into permanent employment automatically.

Written information is due quickly. Since 30 June 2022, LAS § 6 c has given the employer one week from the first working day to put the core terms on paper, covering who the parties are, where and as what the person works, the form of employment, salary, hours, leave, notice periods and whichever collective agreement governs the job. Anything left over must follow inside a month.

Leave and sick pay are statutory. Employees are entitled to 25 days of annual leave. A sick employee gets four-fifths of normal pay from the employer for the first fortnight, reduced once per period by a karensavdrag (waiting-period deduction) worth a fifth of an average week’s sick pay; after that, Försäkringskassan pays. Föräldrapenning (parental benefit) comes from Försäkringskassan, so the employer does not fund it.

Ending employment follows the LAS rules as reformed on 1 October 2022. Dismissal needs sakliga skäl (objective grounds). The employer’s notice starts at 1 month and climbs with service to a 6-month ceiling at a decade. Redundancy selection still follows length of service, though any employer may now keep 3 named people outside it, and a disputed dismissal no longer keeps the person on payroll once the notice has run.

No Swedish statute, regulation or authority guidance mentions employer of record arrangements by name. The closest statute is lag (2012:854) om uthyrning av arbetstagare, which covers workers employed by a bemanningsföretag (staffing agency) and placed with a kundföretag (client company). Whether and how it applies to a given arrangement depends on the facts, so it is sensible to take advice on your own setup.

Several of its rules are useful to know. Section 6 requires hired-out workers to receive at least the basic conditions, including pay, working time and holiday, they would have had if the client had employed them directly. An agency is barred from blocking a move by the worker onto the client’s own payroll, and from charging the worker for it. And from 1 October 2022, a placement in one unit of the client lasting over 24 of any 36 months obliges the client either to offer a permanent job within a month or to pay compensation equal to 2 months’ salary.

Two further points can reach the client. A client company that has signed a collective agreement owes its union a negotiation under MBL §§ 38 to 40 before it takes in hired staff. And in permit cases, Migrationsverket puts staffing on its list of sectors that must prove 3 months of salary is secured.

An EOR tends to suit a company with a handful of Swedish hires, an uncertain timeline in the market, or a need to start before a company registration is in place. The trade-off against forming an aktiebolag, with its SEK 25,000 share capital and Bolagsverket registration, is set out in our comparison of EOR versus a Swedish aktiebolag.

If you are ready to move, the order of events from quote to first payslip is covered in the Swedish EOR onboarding sequence. Before signing with any provider, work through the questions to ask a Swedish EOR, especially on collective agreement coverage and pension handling.

Non-EU candidates add a separate step. The permit salary rule was raised on 1 June 2026 to nine-tenths of the Swedish median, currently SEK 34,470 a month, and Migrationsverket identifies the employer by its organisationsnummer. In an EOR arrangement that is the employer of record’s number, so the permit case runs through the EOR.

Budget for time as well as cost. A ten-day advertising window, a contract signed ahead of filing and terms that match agreement or industry levels all come before the case is lodged, so a permit hire takes noticeably longer to start than a candidate with an existing Swedish residence right.