Compensation Trends 2026: Sweden
The state of hiring and pay in Nordic tech
Discover Ravio’s data on how Swedish tech companies are managing compensation – including salary increases, hiring trends, and pay equity strategies.
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Growth in median salaries continues as Sweden’s tech market establishes
Growth in salary benchmarks has slowed down across the whole European tech market in the past year, with companies focusing on sustainable growth, intentional hiring, and AI augmentation.
For instance, the median salary for a P3 Software Engineer in Sweden increased by 16.9% between 2023-4 but only 5.5% between 2024-5.
However, this 5.5% growth is the strongest across Europe, with other markets seeing only a 1.0-1.9% shift in the P3 Software Engineer benchmark – Sweden is continuing its strong trajectory in becoming an established tech ecosystem.
Sweden has seen the largest decrease in hiring, down a third from last year
Hiring rates have declined across most European tech markets in the past year (with Germany as the sole exception).
But it’s Sweden that experienced the largest decrease in hiring, down 34% from the previous year to just 17% – now also the lowest hiring rate across all markets.
This contraction is particularly interesting given Sweden's strong salary benchmark growth. The need to match competitive market salaries for new hires may be constraining budgets for additional headcount.
Attrition rates are down across Europe as a whole, but up 28% in Sweden
Sweden has one of the lowest attrition rates in European tech, averaging 10.0% in 2024 and now at 12.8% – second only to Spain with an attrition rate of 12.6%.
However, the rate of attrition has increased sharply in Sweden in the last year, with the shift from 10.0% to 12.8% being a 28% increase year-on-year.
This could be linked to the rise in market median salaries in Sweden, if employees are seeing roles advertised elsewhere at new market rates, there’s a clear reason to move on – especially because Sweden has the lowest average salary increase and the second lowest promotion rate across European tech.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive is the front-of-mind topic for Reward Leaders in 2026
The unadjusted gender pay gap in Sweden stands at 17% this year – the lowest across European tech. However, Sweden's adjusted pay gap (like-for-like comparison accounting for job factors) sits at 2.5%, slightly above the European average of 2.4%.
This suggests that while Sweden has made more progress than peers on pay equity, the remaining gap is harder to explain away through factors like seniority mix or job function – pointing to bias in individual pay decisions rather than who holds which roles.
For Swedish companies, this is a reason to look beyond the headline number. The EU Pay Transparency Directive will require new gender pay gap reporting for each group of employees – and internal data often tells a different story from the market average.
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