Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has sparked a huge debate the last couple of days due to his new suggestion that Swedes should keep on working until they are 75- instead of 65 as the standard retirement age is today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pension’s scheme isn\u2019t based on magic. It is a welfare ambition based on large-scale re-distribution and citizens\u2019 own work. If people think that we can live longer and shorten our work life, then pensions will get lower,\u201d Reinfeldt said to Dagens Nyheter (Today’s News).<\/p>\n
With the risk of being completely and utterly dull here – here’s a quick guide to the Swedish pension system and how it works – for anyone who might be interested: The retirement age is normally 65, but it’s flexible and some people start to work less when they are 61 while some keep on working until they are 67. Of Swedes over 65 years old, 7.8 percent were employed in 2010, according to Statistics Sweden. <\/p>\n So, what about this new suggestion then? Well, apart from us living longer and the higher standard of living in general, the Prime Minister believes that employers would be more willing to hire people over 55 if they knew they would stay for another 20 years instead of 10. And that we might have to consider more than one career during our working life – a quite challenging view for most of us.<\/p>\n As mentioned before, this has not been greeted with open arms and cheers. Debates has been raging in the media and on the social networks, people have been rather… well let’s put it this way, unkind to the Swedish Prime Minister and his new suggestion.<\/p>\n What’s the retirement age in your country? And could you imagine yourself working until you are 75?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has sparked a huge debate the last couple of days due to his new suggestion that Swedes should keep on working until they are 75- instead of 65 as the standard retirement age is today. \u201cThe pension’s scheme isn\u2019t based on magic. It is a welfare ambition based on large-scale…<\/p>\n
\nThe Swedish pension system consists of three main components \u2013 national retirement pension, occupational pension and voluntary pension. The national retirement pension is made up of three elements, income pension<\/strong>, premium pension<\/strong> and guarantee pension<\/strong>. The income pension and the premium pension are completely independent from the national budget. The income pension is financed by employer contributions representing 16% of an employee\u2019s gross annual income. Premium pension is financed through an additional contribution from the employer equal to approximately 2.5% of the employee\u2019s gross annual income. Occupational pension is the pension coverage provided to employees via their employer, as a component of salary, which is also known as collective agreement pension. Voluntary pension consists of private pension insurance based on voluntary savings.<\/p>\n