How salary floors work without a minimum wage in Sweden

Swedish law sets no minimum wage at all. No act of parliament sets a national hourly or monthly floor, and no government body publishes one each year. Pay floors exist, but they are written into kollektivavtal (collective agreements) negotiated between employer organisations and trade unions, sector by sector.

According to Medlingsinstitutet, the national mediation office, about 300 of the roughly 650 central collective agreements contain minimum-pay levels. The remaining agreements deal with pay without printing a floor.

For a foreign employer this changes the question that matters. Asking what the legal minimum is gets the answer that there is none. The useful question is which collective agreement, if any, covers the role and what its pay tables and conditions say, because that is where the floor, the pension and much of the leave top-up will come from.

Medlingsinstitutet also compiles the wage statistics that other rules rely on. Its average-salary data sets the EU Blue Card threshold at 1.25 times the average gross salary, and that works out at SEK 53,625 a month for applications from 15 July 2026. That figure is a permit condition, not a pay floor, but it is one of the few published salary numbers a foreign employer will meet in Swedish rules.

Collective agreements covered 88% of employees aged 18–68 in Sweden in 2025, according to Medlingsinstitutet’s coverage figures. Coverage is 100% in the public sector and 83% in the private sector, which is where nearly every foreign employer’s hire will sit.

The figure falls sharply for very small employers. In firms with 1–9 employees, coverage is 44%. A company hiring its first one or two people in Sweden can therefore end up either inside or outside an agreement, and the choice has cost consequences in both directions.

Outside an agreement, the statutory layer still applies in full. Semesterlagen still gives 25 days of holiday, the employer still carries two weeks of sjuklön at 80% in each sick period, and contributions of 31.42% still fall on every krona of pay. What falls away is the agreement layer: the printed pay floor, the occupational pension and the agreement insurances.

An agreement binds the employer that signed it, directly or through membership of an employer organisation, and it then applies in practice to the employer’s staff in the roles it covers. That is why the identity of the legal employer, and the agreements it has signed, matters more in Sweden than a statutory wage table would.

The floor for a given hire is set by the collective agreement that covers the legal employer and the kind of work the person will do. Two employees of the same company can fall under different agreements if their roles are covered by different texts.

Not every agreement prints a figure. With minimum-pay levels in around 300 of about 650 central agreements, a role may sit under a text with a pay table or under one that leaves the level to the individual contract. Reading the pay chapter is the only way to know which case applies.

The working method for a foreign employer is short. Identify the agreement the legal employer applies to the role, read its pay and working-time chapters, and read the pension and insurance chapters in the same sitting, since they add cost on top of salary. Where no agreement applies, pay is a matter for the contract, and market rates and competing offers then decide the practical floor.

Timing matters too. Agreement terms can change when a new agreement period starts, so a pay table checked at offer stage should be checked again when the employer of record prepares the contract.

An agreement brings more than a pay floor. For salaried private-sector staff, the most visible extra is ITP1, the occupational pension under the agreement between Svenskt Näringsliv and PTK, priced in 2026 at 4.5% of monthly pay as far as SEK 52,125 and 30% of any pay beyond it. Särskild löneskatt of 24.26% is then charged on the premium. Eligibility starts at 25 for anyone born in 1979 or after.

The step in the ITP1 rate is easy to miss when setting a salary. At SEK 50,000 a month the premium comes to SEK 2,250 monthly, SEK 27,000 over the year, with the special payroll tax still to add. At SEK 60,000 a month it becomes 4.5% of SEK 52,125 plus 30% of the SEK 7,875 above that level, which is about SEK 4,708 a month, so a 20% pay difference roughly doubles the pension premium.

Agreements also carry group insurances, and they often improve on statutory leave rules. The statutory supplement for each paid holiday day is 0.43% of monthly pay, and agreements may set it higher. Parental-leave top-ups on top of Försäkringskassan’s benefit also come from agreements rather than statute, and their level varies.

These items should be priced before an offer is made. In our Stockholm cost example, the ITP1 line sits apart from the statutory total, which makes the effect of an agreement easy to read. The mechanics of the contributions and pension tax are set out in arbetsgivaravgifter and pensions explained.

Yes. Some Swedish rules point to agreement-level pay even where the employer itself has not signed an agreement, and each of them can be relevant to a foreign company hiring through a third party.

Work permits carry their own floor. The rule changed on 1 June 2026 from 80% to 90% of the median wage, and Migrationsverket put the resulting monthly figure, effective 16 June 2026, at SEK 34,470, or SEK 28,725 for the groups it lists as exempt. Salary alone is not enough: the terms offered have to match what an agreement or the industry norm would give, and the union concerned may comment on them. Advertising for 10 days, a signed contract before applying and insured protection against ill health, death and workplace injury, plus pension insurance, complete the list, and staffing employers carry an extra duty to prove 3 months of pay can be met. Our post on the 2026 work-permit salary threshold covers the detail.

Hired-out workers have an equal-treatment right. Under lag (2012:854) om uthyrning av arbetstagare, a worker employed by a staffing agency and placed with a client must receive at least the basic conditions, pay included, that would have applied had the client hired them directly. The pay the client would have paid its own staff becomes the reference, subject to the exceptions in the Act.

Unions can also act at the client’s end. Under MBL §§ 38–40, a client that is itself bound by an agreement has to consult the union before bringing in outside or hired workers, and the union may block the arrangement if it would conflict with law or with the agreement.

When you hire with Employer of Record Sweden, we put our name to the contract as employer of record, and the collective agreement position decides which pay rules, pension and insurances apply. It is one of the first things to confirm, and it belongs among the questions worth putting to any Swedish EOR.

Before you set a salary, get written answers on these points from the employer of record:

• whether it is bound by an agreement for this category of work
• what the pay chapter requires at the hire’s level and experience
• which pension and insurance lines will appear on the monthly invoice as a result
• how pay revisions under the agreement will be passed through during the contract

With those answers, a salary figure becomes a full monthly cost you can approve.

The service fee does not move with the agreement. Whichever agreement applies, the charge stays at USD 560 a head each month (around SEK 5,550, converting at ECB rates on 24 September 2026); the agreement changes only the salary-related lines. The pricing page shows how those lines are itemised.

Also consider your own position. If your company already applies a Swedish agreement, or has a union presence in Sweden, the MBL negotiation duty and the staffing law’s equal-treatment rule may reach the arrangement. Budgeting at agreement level from the start avoids a correction partway through the contract.

The agreement also shows up in the paperwork. Under LAS § 6 c, the written statement a new hire receives has to identify the collective agreement, and its core terms must be handed over within seven calendar days of the start of work. A hire can therefore see from day one which agreement governs their pay.

Benchmark against the agreement first and the market second. The agreement gives the minimum and the revision rules; salary surveys and live offers from competitors decide where a candidate will actually accept.

Keep the 2026 statutory reference points in view while doing so. State income tax starts on taxable income above SEK 643,000, and the ITP1 rate steps up from 4.5% to 30% on salary above SEK 52,125 a month, so both employee take-home pay and employer pension cost change shape around those levels.

Plan for pay transparency as well. The EU Pay Transparency Directive is due in Sweden from 1 January 2027 under the government’s current plan, and it brings salary ranges for job applicants and reports to Diskrimineringsombudsmannen; check the enacted date before relying on it. Salary bands set now will need to hold up under that scrutiny.

Compare like with like on hours as well. The Working Hours Act caps ordinary time at 40 hours a week and general overtime at 200 hours a year, and agreements are allowed to vary those limits as long as they respect EU Directive 2003/88. An agreement’s overtime and working-time chapters therefore affect what a monthly salary actually buys. For a structured start, see recruiting staff in Sweden or send us the role for a costed view.