Sweden is an export oriented market economy featuring a modern distribution system, excellent internal and external communications, and a skilled labour force. Timber, hydropower, and iron ore constitute the resource base of an economy heavily oriented toward foreign trade. Sweden’s engineering sector accounts for 50% of output and exports. Telecommunications, the automotive industry and the pharmaceutical industries are also of great importance. Agriculture accounts for 2% of GDP and employment. According to the book, The Flight of the Creative Class, by the U.S. economist, Professor Richard Florida of George Mason University, Sweden is ranked as having the best creativity in Europe for business and is predicted to become a talent magnet for the world’s most purposeful workers. The book compiled an index to measure the kind of creativity most useful to business – talent, technology and tolerance – and found Sweden to be the number one spot in Europe and the world. The top ten countries, in descending order, are: Sweden, Japan, Finland, the US, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway and Germany.

Sweden’s industry is overwhelmingly in private control; unlike some other industrialized Western countries, such as Austria and Italy, publicly owned enterprises were always of minor importance. Eighty percent of the workforce is organized through the trade-unions which have the right to elect two representatives to the board in all Swedish companies with more than 25 employees. The Swedish Riksbank - founded in 1668 and thus making it the oldest central bank in the world - is currently focusing on price stability with its inflation target of 2%. Growth is expected to reach 3.3% in 2006. High taxes have however ensured a higher degree of government influence on household consumption decisions than in most other Western nations. Public sector spending amounts to 53% of the GDP; the high figure primarily reflects the large transfer payments of the Swedish welfare state.

Swedish unemployment figures are highly contested, with the Social-Democrats defending the official figure of 5.4% (as of 2006) and the centre-right Alliance for Sweden claiming a much higher figure. These numbers do not, however, include people in government unemployment programmes (about 2% of the workforce), people on extended sick-leave, those in early retirement or those outside the unemployment system. Unemployment is higher amongst younger people. Many Swedes work abroad in Denmark, Norway and even the UK, where they are desired and viewed as a skilled workforce. Because of the contradiction – unemployment despite a growing commercial enterprise economy – politicians and analysts often speak of the “jobless growth”. According to Eurostat the unemployment rate in February 2007 was at 6.7% down from 7.4% from February 2006.

Sweden is known for having an even distribution of income, with a Gini coefficient at 0.21 in 2001 (one of the most even income distributions in the industrialized world). However Sweden still bears scars from the economic crisis in the 1990s, which resulted in thousands of people unemployed and a great national debt. Two remnants are an increase in socioeconomic segregation (Sweden’s class divisions increased in the late 20th century, with semi-educated immigrants, low-income refugees and “guest workers” the most affected), and the national debt of approximately 1,248 billion Swedish Kronor (approx. €134 billion, 01.2007).