Employer of record in Sweden: costs, rules and how to hire

Sweden's collective agreements can set salary floors, occupational pensions, insurance, hours, overtime pay, leave improvements and employment procedures, which makes identifying the right one the first drafting decision rather than a later check. A sector agreement does not automatically bind every business in that sector, and some statutory rules can be varied only through a qualifying collective agreement.

Start with the agreement and written terms

Provide clear written terms covering the parties, the start date, the workplace, the role, the employment type, pay components and frequency, hours and the relevant procedures. Core statutory information is due within seven calendar days after work begins and other specified information within one month, while special fixed-term employment information is due when the arrangement is made and an agency's client details must be given when known. Record changes no later than the date they take effect.

Choose the employment type and probation terms

Indefinite employment is the default, with special fixed-term employment, substitution and seasonal work as recognised arrangements. Special fixed-term employment converts after more than 12 months in five years, or under the linked-contract rule where specified temporary contracts follow within six months of one another, and substitution converts after more than two years in five. Special fixed-term employment needs no specific temporary business reason, though the duration and conversion rules still apply.

The statutory probation maximum is six months, subject to a qualifying collective agreement, and if employment will not continue, notice must be given by the end of probation or it becomes indefinite. An employer planning to end probation early or without continuation must normally notify the employee at least two weeks in advance and notify the local union if the employee is a member, with consultation rights applying.

Employment is full-time unless agreed otherwise. For part-time employment the employer must give a written reason within three weeks if the worker asks, and eligible employees with at least six months' service can request a different employment type or increased hours and receive a reasoned written response within one month. Additional hours, annual leave and priority for available increased hours each need their own assessment.

Check restrictions and work-product rights

An employer generally cannot forbid an employee from also working for another employer, with exceptions for interference with the employee's work, harmful competition or other harm to the business. Check the actual conflict and the applicable agreement before imposing a restriction.

A post-employment competition restriction is not binding beyond what is reasonable, and unreasonable contract terms can be modified or disregarded. Check the role, the business interest, the scope, the duration, the compensation and any applicable collective agreement. A two-year restriction with 60% compensation is not a universal statutory formula for every Swedish employee, whatever a template may suggest.

Ask the provider to document confidentiality and any transfer of work-product rights from the employee through to your business. Employee inventions follow specific rules, with the employer's rights depending on the work and the invention, and an employer acquiring rights can owe reasonable compensation. Do not assume every form of intellectual property automatically belongs to the EOR client.

Misclassification risk, and the two arrangements people confuse

Sweden's framing is the clearest way to think about this anywhere: an independent business supplying a service and an employee assigned to work under your direction are different arrangements. Not different labels for one arrangement, different arrangements. Source: the approved Swedish contractor guidance, arbetsformedlingen.se on forms of employment, checked 18 September 2026.

So the person's independence, duties and working relationship have to be checked before choosing a contractor agreement, and a contract title or an invoicing arrangement alone is not a sufficient employment-status assessment. Source: the approved Swedish contractor guidance, checked 18 September 2026.

What a hirer does about it: ask whether the person is running a business that happens to serve you, or working for you in a way that happens to be invoiced. If it is the second, employ them. Sweden also has a well-developed agency-work sector, so if the attraction of a contractor arrangement was flexibility rather than cost, there are lawful routes to that which do not carry this risk. I am not quoting a penalty figure because I have not verified one.

The first row is the expensive one and it is the client's problem rather than the provider's. The rest are places where a Swedish figure means something narrower than it looks.

Resolve these points before signing the offer

Ask the provider to settle each of these in the proposed employment terms and cost breakdown before you confirm a start date.

Three of those rows describe the same underlying habit: reading a Swedish entitlement as an allocation when it is an accrual, a comparison or a procedure. Getting them right before the offer is cheaper than explaining them afterwards.

The standard 2026 employer contribution rate is 31.42% of salary and taxable benefits, and unusually for Europe it is a single figure with no ceiling to model. What it does not include is occupational pension and the special payroll tax on pension costs, which is where a Swedish quote can quietly diverge from another.

Employee tax and the pension tax credit

Income-tax withholding depends on the employee's tax table, income and circumstances, and municipal tax varies, so the 2026 national average of 32.38% is not a universal payslip deduction. State income tax is 20% on taxable earned income above SEK 643,000 after the basic deduction, and for someone under 66 at the start of 2026 the Tax Agency gives SEK 660,400 before the basic deduction as the corresponding threshold illustration.

The general pension contribution is 7%, capped at SEK 47,100 for 2026, and an individual normally receives a corresponding 100% tax reduction, limited by the tax available for the reduction. Do not subtract another flat 7% on top of the employee's calculated income tax without accounting for that credit, and keep all of it separate from employer pension contributions and occupational pension premiums.

Payroll reporting and business taxes

The employer reports pay, benefits and deducted preliminary tax for each payee in a monthly PAYE return and pays withheld tax and employer contributions to its tax account, with most returns due by the 12th of the following month and calendar and employer-category exceptions. Confirm the actual filing and payment dates in the Tax Agency calendar, and report relevant parental and temporary-parental absence details under the current reporting rules.

Swedish corporation tax is 20.6% of taxable company profit and the general VAT rate is 25%, with reduced rates and exemptions for specified supplies. Neither is an extra deduction from an employee's salary, and the treatment of the actual EOR invoice for VAT and any cross-border rules is worth asking about explicitly.

Occupational pension and insurance

Occupational pension is separate from the public pension system and commonly follows a collective agreement or an employer's own commitment, so not every employer automatically provides the same plan. Certain work-permit arrangements require occupational pension insurance from the start. Check the plan, the pensionable pay, the age bands, the premiums and the insurance cover for the actual hire.

Special payroll tax on pension costs is 24.26% of the relevant pension costs and is reported in the employer's income-tax return, separate from the ordinary 31.42% employer charge on salary and benefits. The pension premium and that tax should both appear as their own items in a complete employment-cost quote rather than disappearing into a single percentage.

Ask the provider to price the pension, insurance, extra leave and pay top-ups that apply to the actual employer and role, and make sure the benefits promised in the offer match the employment contract and the payroll setup.

Sweden has no general statutory minimum wage. Collective agreements commonly set salary floors and classifications, so identify the agreement and the rate applicable to the actual employer and role. Work-permit salary requirements are a separate immigration condition rather than a national minimum wage for all employees, and conflating the two produces both compliance and budget errors.

Set salary, the payday and agreed benefits

For context, Statistics Sweden reports an average monthly salary of SEK 42,900 across sectors for 2025, on its page updated 16 June 2026. That is a broad average rather than a median or a quote for a particular role, city or level of experience. Keep the SEK measure and the 2025 data year visible, because an OECD purchasing-power figure answers a different comparison question.

Monthly pay is a common arrangement, including the agency employment described by the Swedish Public Employment Service. State the pay amount, the frequency and the agreed payday in the employment terms and explain deductions on the payroll record. The 25th is not a universal statutory payday, and employee payment and the employer's monthly tax reporting run on separate deadlines.

Set out any bonus, extra salary payment, insurance, pension and other benefits in the agreement and in the provider quote, without assuming a universal thirteenth salary, annual gym allowance or enhanced holiday entitlement. The applicable collective agreement, the employment terms and the immigration requirements determine which additions are required for this hire.

Working time, overtime and rest

The limits below are ceilings and reference-period averages rather than a description of a normal week.

The Working Hours Act generally limits ordinary work to 40 hours a week, with averaging over up to four weeks where the work requires it, while total working time including overtime must generally average no more than 48 hours a week over a reference period of up to four months. Scope exclusions and lawful collective-agreement variations matter, and the 48-hour average is not a routine 48-hour ordinary week.

General overtime is limited to 200 hours a calendar year, with a further 150 hours requiring special reasons and no reasonable alternative, and general and extra overtime together also subject to 48 hours over four weeks or 50 hours in a calendar month, with emergency rules separate. Overtime pay or time off follows the applicable agreement, because there is no universal statutory 50% or 100% premium for every Swedish employee.

The ordinary rules require 11 consecutive hours of daily rest and 36 consecutive hours of weekly rest, with breaks arranged so employees do not work more than five continuous hours without one. A normal break allows the worker to leave the workplace, while necessary meal interruptions and short pauses can count as working time under different rules. Check any lawful exceptions and the collective agreement.

Night work is assessed using the period 22:00 to 06:00, and covered night workers generally must not exceed an average of eight hours in each 24-hour period over the statutory reference period, with a stricter daily limit for hazardous or especially demanding night work. Night and unsocial-hours pay depend on the applicable agreement rather than a statutory premium.

The employer must keep records of on-call duty, overtime and additional part-time hours, with access rights for workers and their representatives, and changes to ordinary working-time and on-call schedules normally require at least two weeks' advance notice, with statutory and collective-agreement exceptions. Agree how the client supplies accurate hours and changes to the EOR.

The statutory annual-leave entitlement is 25 days per leave year, but paid days depend on qualifying accrual, which is the distinction that catches out a first Swedish hire. The default leave year is 1 April to 31 March with the preceding year as the earning year, someone starting after 31 August normally has five days' leave entitlement for that leave year, and part-time employees should receive an equivalent leave period rather than losing vacation weeks merely for working fewer hours.

Annual leave and holiday pay

Holiday pay comes by one of two methods and they are alternatives, not layers. Under the salary method an eligible monthly-paid employee keeps current salary and fixed supplements and receives an additional 0.43% of monthly salary per paid vacation day, with 1.82% per paid day for weekly pay, while the alternative percentage method generally uses 12% of qualifying pay in the earning year, with specific treatment for variable pay and certain changed-hours or absence cases. The 12% method is not an extra charge added to the full salary method.

Employees should generally receive at least four consecutive weeks of leave during June to August, unless otherwise agreed or special reasons apply, and where the employer sets the dates without agreement the ordinary notice is two months. Paid days above 20 can normally be saved for up to five years. Check the agreement, the protected absences and the employee's balance before treating days as forfeited or replacing leave with cash.

The statutory calendar includes New Year's Day, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Monday, May Day, Ascension Day, Whit Sunday, National Day, Midsummer Day, All Saints' Day and Christmas Day and Boxing Day, as well as Sundays. In 2026 Good Friday is 3 April, Midsummer Day is 20 June and All Saints' Day is 31 October. Midsummer Eve, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are not named public holidays in that Act, though collective agreements and annual-leave counting rules can still give them special treatment.

Parental and family leave

Swedish parental rights split into a right to be absent and a right to a benefit, and the two run on different rules and different clocks.

An employee is entitled to maternity leave for at least seven weeks before the expected birth and seven weeks after it, with two weeks around birth compulsory unless another qualifying leave covers the period and separate protection for breastfeeding absence. Those leave rights do not promise seven weeks of full employer-paid salary on either side of the birth.

A parent has a right to full leave until the child is 18 months old even without drawing parental benefit, and later full leave is available while taking full parental benefit, with corresponding adoption rules measured from placement and statutory age and school-year limits. Check the leave rights separately from how many paid benefit days the parent has available.

For an eligible child, parental benefit provides 480 days: 390 at the income-based level and 90 at SEK 180 per day. For children born in 2016 or later, 90 income-based days are reserved for each parent and cannot ordinarily be transferred. Income-based payments depend on insured income, caps and qualifying conditions rather than guaranteeing uncapped salary replacement, and any employer top-up follows the relevant agreement.

Planned parental leave ordinarily requires at least two months' notice, or as soon as possible where that is not feasible, with a usual limit of three leave periods per calendar year and exceptions for specified leave such as temporary care of a child. Discuss scheduling with the employee and check the applicable collective agreement and return-to-work rules.

A parent can generally reduce normal hours by up to 25% without parental benefit until the child turns eight or completes the first school year, whichever is later under the current rule, with separate provisions for reduced hours with partial parental benefit. Eligible parents of children under eight with at least six months' service can request flexible working arrangements and receive a reasoned response, which is a right to be considered rather than a right to the chosen arrangement.

The parent who does not give birth can qualify for ten days of compensated absence in connection with the birth under the temporary-parental-benefit arrangement, separate from the ordinary 480 parental-benefit days. They must normally be used within 60 days after the child comes home, and the current application deadline is 30 days from the first day at home with the child. Check insurance eligibility and special family circumstances.

VAB generally covers care of an ill child from eight months to under 12, with exceptions, and eligible parents share up to 120 benefit days per child per year, though after the first 60 days some grounds no longer qualify. Payment is income-based and capped, the current application deadline is 30 days from the first absence, and a doctor's or nurse's certificate is generally needed after seven days.

An employee can take leave for urgent family illness or accident when immediate presence is necessary. The statute establishes no universal ten-day paid bereavement allowance or five paid days for marriage, so check the collective agreement and the employer policy for compassionate leave, pay and documentary requirements. Qualifying collective agreements can limit urgent-family leave days per year or per event.

Sickness and return to work

For eligible sickness absence the employer generally pays 80% of lost salary and employment benefits during the first 14 calendar days, and the waiting deduction is 20% of an average week's sick pay rather than 20% of normal weekly gross pay. Short contracts can have a qualifying period, and linked sickness periods and repeated-deduction protections matter too. Check any collective-agreement calculation or top-up.

A medical certificate is generally needed from day eight of sickness, and after the employer's first 14-day period the employer reports the absence and the employee applies to Forsakringskassan for sickness benefit, with eligibility, insured income and caps determining payment. The employer keeps its rehabilitation and work-adjustment responsibilities throughout, and no longer absence is fully funded at uncapped salary.