Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

dominated by people from other countries. One of these lines of work is the picking of wild berries and mushrooms. The picking of wild berries and mushrooms generates billions of SEK each year, yet the companies working with this still opts to employ mainly people coming from Thailand.

To try and see if this was an industry that the Swedish municipalities could get into, the municipality of Skinnskatteberg issued an investigation to see whether there was any profitability to be had and if this profit could pay for all or part of the salaries the employed would be getting. The premise of this investigation was that the employed were to be getting payed at least as much or more than they were already receiving from government grants. These salaries were then subsidized by the municipality and subtracted from the potential earnings the employed were estimated to make. The investigation was also to consider that some or all of these unemployed people were so due to some circumstance which made them unable to work as efficiently as others due to, for example, disabilities.

The result of this was a margin per employee, varying from -2655 SEK/month to +3677 SEK/month depending on the base salary of the employee and the berry mushroom picking mix.