STOCKHOLM, May 31 (Xinhua) -- Sweden is largely failing to integrate refugees into the labor market, and the average cost of taking in a refugee is 74,000 Swedish krona (8,384 U.S. dollars) per year, according to a new report published on Thursday.
The report, from the Expert Group on Public Economics (ESO), an independent committee attached to Sweden's finance ministry, looked at employment rates among refugees between 1983 and 2015. It found that the rate of integration was significantly faster in the 1980s than in the 1990s and onwards.
After Sweden's financial crisis in the 1990s, integration steadied somewhat, but there has still been a gradual decline since then, according to the report.
The report was written by Joakim Ruist, a researcher at ESO, whose mission is to provide research on which to base socioeconomic policy decisions.
Ruist told Swedish Television it would be an exaggeration to label the current integration of refugees as "failed".
"There is no yardstick by which to measure for certain what constitutes a successful or failed (integration), but what we do know is that it has always been difficult to get refugees into work," he said.
The report said there is a gender gap, with female refugees having lower employment rates on average than male in their first 10 years of living in Sweden. However, the gap more or less evens out after around 20 years.
It also includes a forecast of the financial cost of taking in refugees and their relatives, who enter Sweden under family reunification rules. The forecast is based on a calculation of the refugees' and their relatives' lifetime contributions to Sweden's public sector finances.
The report shows that refugee immigration constitutes a net cost, both in the short and long-term.
The costs are highest in the first few years after immigrating to Sweden, the study shows. After that, refugees make a positive contribution to state finances on average, but those contributions do not cover the costs incurred during the first few years of living in Sweden, or the refugees' retirement years.
"The uncertainty in the calculations is significant but, still, there are indications that the net redistribution via public finances to an average refugee throughout their life in Sweden amounts to 74,000 Swedish krona per year on average," said the report. (1 U.S. dollar = 8.83 Swedish krona)
