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Hartmann, Sweden

National statistics on empioyment often disguise morę than they disclose the actual empioyment situation of a country. Regional imbalances, with lack of labour in rural areas and a surplus in densely populated parts of Sweden and a high demand for youth in industry and private services in the big cities are immense problems at present.

Sweden, with its large area and smali population is currently facing a drain of youth to the big city areas which boom in economic growth. Housing, not jobs, is problem number one for young people in Stockholm, while youth in the north of the country have no problems regarding their housing. but fail to get gainful empioyment.

Campaigns by industry to attract morę young workers, the prognosed growth of the building industry and private services will worsen these regional imbalances. Only new types of macro-economic measures, steering resources to remote areas can prevent a population crisis in large parts of Sweden.

Regional imbałance is only one indicator which points at a futurę dualistic development in youth empioyment. A rise in the qualification requirements by employers. the tendency to overestimate technical skills in relation to humanistic knowledge, wage-differences between workers in public em-ployment and in high-tech industry lead to dualism on the labour market. The use of micro-electronics' and robots in manufacluring opens the way to a futurę where fewer and morę specialized workers can produce morę and morę commodities.

While this, in the traditional sense, productive part of the economy will employ a minority of the work-force. the majority will find a job in ser-vices, generally regarded as unproductive, resource-consuming parts of economy. The highly trained and productive work-force might not accept to leave a large share of their surplus to a demanding majority of low-pro-ductive workers in services and will demand a larger share both, in economic and political influence. A new labour aristocracy might evolve. In order to avoid a divided labour market, or perhaps even a divided society, there has to be a structural change of the education and vocational training system which does not trap people in certain trades, but will allow for the application and acceptance of constant re-training during a persons whole life-span. Furthermore, we have to rethink the whole value-system and ideological basis of work in modern society. The question, which type of economic performance is productive and which is resource-consuming has to be reflected against the background of ecological requirements, basie human reproduction needs and long-term effects of production-modes on the social structure of society.