[tegeek]

Guide for Stockholm workers.

1. Average Salary for a software developer with 5 year experience. 32,000 - 38,000 SEK/Month.

2. You can calculate your take-home money here [1].

3. Average 2nd hand rental apartment (30-50 sqm) 5,000 - 7000 SEK/Month. Its easy to find single-person accomodation. [2]

4. The quality of an average apartment is pleasant. Kitchen & Laundry is fully functional from day 1 in every apartment around Sweden.

5. If you've kids, then day-care (preshool) is highly subsidized & generally good quality. All education is free for everyone from age 7-70

6. Almost everyone speaks English. You'll not find any difficulty even if you dont know Swedish.

[1]. http://www.ekonomifakta.se/sv/ (you can enter kommune as Stockholm & enter your salary and date of birth)

[2] http://www.blocket.se/bostad/uthyres/stockholm?sort=&ss=&se=...

[zmb_]

I wouldn't underestimate the difficulty and cost of finding accommodation in Stockholm. It's the number one complaint and problem of my expat (IT) friends/colleagues. Stockholm's population expansion is the fastest in Europe (behind Oslo), but zoning policies etc. have limited the rate of building new housing. Add to that the current low interest rates and you have a lot more demand than supply for housing in the Stockholm area.

It's a great city though and definitely one of the best places in the world to live in.

[alkonaut]

If you are prepared to move around a bit, finding accomodation is not that hard. Finding something to sublet for 1-6 months is trivial, what's hard is finding accomodation for one or more years in the same place.

[pathy]

>3. Average 2nd hand rental apartment (30-50 sqm) 5,000 - 7000 SEK/Month. Its easy to find single-person accomodation. [2]

Unless you live far out that sounds low for a 2nd hand contract. Anywhere close to the city it is more like 10k for 30 sqm.

[tegeek]

You can find these single-person 2nd hand rentals 15 minutes metro distance from city. I wrote this from a point where you can start working as soon as possible and with assumption you are willing to commute 15-20 minutes one way from office to your residence.

[pathy]

Fair!

I guess I am too blinded by the prices in and around the central parts of Stockholm. :)

[yxhuvud]

Remember that 15-20 minutes doesn't get you very far out though. The figures still seem low to me, and to call it easy to find such places seems to come from an alternative reality.

[alkonaut]

Depends on whether you mean 20mins on a bus/commuter train or 20min commute door-to-door. 20min on bus/commuter train easily cuts rents down by a lot, but such a commute is likely 40min in total if you include walking to the bus/train and walking from the train to the office. 5k is really low and likely only gets you a room or a small 1 room apt at the outskirts of the 20min commute.

Btw. I made an experiment that shows approximate commute times on weeekday morning (including walks to stations but no walk from Sthlm Central Station). http://commutemap.azurewebsites.net/

Edit: note the green "islands" of 20minute commute that extend along the commuter train lines.

[dagw]

If you're willing to deal with short (less than 6 month), not always entirely landlord approved, contracts and can move out on short notice then finding a place isn't too hard. If you want to stay put for a year and have a fully legal contract then it obviously gets a lot harder and more expensive.

[smeyer]

I don't know if this is a cultural thing (I"m an American living and renting in Boston), but I figured the default would be people wanting "a fully legal contract" with a lease of a year or so, not looking to move every three months from illegal sublet to illegal sublet.

More precisely, when I see rents quoted for most cities, I tend to assume that people are quoting rents for standard, legal rentals, not quoting the cheapest rent possible for an illegal sublet.

Edit: I should add I'm not implying anyone in this thread is doing anything odd or misleading or anything, just that it's opening my eyes to how different rentals are over there. Thanks for that.

[tegeek]

Again I would like to say that I'm telling from a single person point of view. Who wants to start job as soon as possible and wouldn't mind getting any reasonable rental.

I've 5 examples (1 including me.) who found a reasonable place to live for that money around Stockholm area.

[troels]

Where does the quoted salary range come from? It seems a bit low to me.

[tegeek]

I've studied and have been working in tech sector in Sweden since 2009.

I've plenty of school/work friends working across Sweden.

We discussed this many times about salaries in Stockholm, Göteborg & Malmo and then try to compare it with other European cities (London, Berlin, Paris etc.)

Most of my friends within 5 years experience are between 30,000 to 38,000 SEK /Month across Sweden. All Stockholmers are between 32,000 to 38,000.

My personal salary is more than that bracket but I've 10 years experience & know plenty of stuff from internet scalable middleware to performant front-ends, to programming languages to many species of databases. So I usually don't consider myself average & my salary range in 50s.

[troels]

Thanks - I was wondering if you had it from some official statistics or if it was your own experience.

For comparison, in Copenhagen, the avg. salary for 5 yrs is around 37K DKK, which corresponds to 47K SEK. That's according to our labour union statistics. I'm a bit surprised if the difference between our two cities is really that large (but maybe it is).

[tegeek]

All what I wrote comes from my personal experience/data. I don't follow any union/magazine's salary survey.

I've also friends who are working in Copenhagen & Salary is more there. Then there are friends who work in Copenhagen but live in Malmo because housing is more expensive in Copenhagen than anywhere in Sweden.

If I would rate Oslo, Copenhagen & Stockholm from salary point of view, it'll follow as:

1. Oslo 2. Copenhagen 3. Stockholm

All this comes from my personal circle of friends.

[_delirium]

> housing is more expensive in Copenhagen than anywhere in Sweden

In some ways yes, in some no. Short-term or unofficial sublets are more expensive than the prices you mention elsewhere in the thread. Especially sub-lets of a single room have shot up in price, because there's a shortage of dorms in Copenhagen, so many university students are trying to do temporary room rentals on the private market.

But "proper" rentals of a regular apartment are much easier to get in Copenhagen than in Stockholm, without needing to sit on a multi-year waitlist. A typical 1-bd legal/official rental on a 1+ year contract might be around 5-7k DKK, i.e. about 6-9k SEK. A 2-bd maybe 6-10k DKK (8-13k SEK). You can certainly pay more too, but there are a lot in that range.

[tegeek]

I lived in a 3 bedroom apartment (90 sqm) (in Göteborg) from 13 minutes tram to city center and I used to pay 6500 SEK till 2013. Now the same cost 6800 (rent increased due the inflation, landlord demand etc.).

The quality of apartments are better in Sweden than in Copenhagen. You can open blocket and book a visit to any Malmö apartment for that matter and you'll see the difference easily.

The same quality of life (living, rental etc.) is expensive in Copenhagen.

[Erikun]

Average salary for programmers in the private sector, 25-29 years old in Sweden is 31 300 SEK/month. Average salary for programmers in the private sector, all ages, in Stockholm is 43 500 SEK/month. Cant find age and region data combined though. All figures are from the official Statistics Sweden database (government statistics bureau).

[jonsen]

You really shouldn't compare salaries through currency exchange rates. When shopping in Denmark for say 100 DKK you will get aproximately the same in Sweden shopping for 100 SEK.

[INTPenis]

They are a bit low. A friend of mine works in Stockholm making over 40k as devops sysadmin. I work as a devops sysadmin in Malmö making over 35k a month. Stockholm is much more expensive than Malmö.

[tegeek]

The only thing expensive in Stockholm is rentals & that too in or around the City.

If you're willing to live 20-25 minutes from City, the cost isn't much different than Malmo or Göteborg.

[rohanprabhu]

In the link that you provided, it asks if I am a member of the Swedish church? Can you please shed some light on how that affects taxation?

[estomagordo]

If you belong to a religious federation (I do not think this is limited to the Swedish Church), your membership fee or however men of the cloth prefer to phrase things, is deducted straight through taxation. It's rather odd.

[jib]

You pay a tiny amount of church tax if you are a member of the Swedish church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax#Sweden

[TorKlingberg]

The Church of Sweden was the state church until 2000. As a remnant of that, they can still collect membership fees through the tax system. It is open to other churches as well.

[tegeek]

I personally don't pay any church tax. Its only if you want to pay.

There is no way to reduce your taxes (apart from tiny tiny amount of church tax) for salaried employee.

[PyErr_SetString]

Swedish church membership means an additional 1% tax on average.

[mchaver]

Is that salary you quoted before or after taxes?

[tegeek]

Every salary mention in Sweden culture/companies is before tax.

Tax is dependent on where (which kommune) you live. Its generally between 29.5% to 32% until your salary is 32,000 SEK.

You pay higher tax on income more than 32,000 SEK and it goes upto 50%.

[fapjacks]

But it's incredibly important to mention that Swedish taxes are nothing like American taxes. People balk at that number, but the truth is that there are an enormous number of provable, measurable benefits to individuals and society which the tax money goes to in Sweden. In the US our money just disappears into a big weapons-development-shaped hole. There is so much we don't get in the US for our tax dollars that it's easy to reel at the prospect of even higher taxes. My taxes in California are ten percent lower than what they will be in Sweden, but I get virtually nothing for my American tax dollars.

[fnordsensei]

On the other hand, taxes may be reduced if you work more than a certain amount each year, as it has been the last eight years. But we're moving from a right-ish gov't to a left-ish now, so YMMV.

[fnordsensei]

That would be before taxes.