Country pillars
The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2024 scores.
Sweden: 2024 scores and progress over time
Sweden ranked 2nd of 31 countries in the European Skills Index in 2024, with a total score of 67.3. At the pillar level, it ranked 8th in Skills Development (score: 61.7), 4th in Skills Activation (score: 77.5) and 10th in Skills Matching (score: 65.5).
The highest-ranking indicators of Sweden, in comparison with other countries, are Recent training (36.2%, rank 1st) and Activity rate (aged 25-54) (91.6%, rank 2nd). On the other hand, its weakest indicators are VET students (35.4%, rank 25th) and Pre-primary pupil-to-teacher ratio (13.8, rank 22nd).
Over the last seven years the overall rank of Sweden has remained unchanged from 2nd place in 2017. In that time, its overall score has increased from 63.6 to 67.3. The indicators that have improved the most (in terms of their normalised scores, and accounting for indicator directions) are High digital skills (35.2% in 2017 to 46% in 2024), and Over-qualification rate (tertiary graduates) (20% in 2017 to 14.9% in 2024). The indicators that have shown the greatest declines are Pre-primary pupil-to-teacher ratio (6.4 in 2017 to 13.8 in 2024), and Reading, maths & science scores (aged 15) (495.8 in 2017 to 487.4 in 2024).
Note that these figures may refer to imputed data points.