The offer of employment and union opinion in a Swedish work permit
The Swedish Migration Agency opens the file with the employer, and the relevant union must be allowed to comment on the terms before a permit can be granted.
A Swedish work permit starts with the employer. The Swedish Migration Agency receives the employment details through its online service, the worker then completes the application, and the relevant trade union must be given the chance to comment on the terms. Those terms must match a Swedish collective agreement or practice in the industry.
The order of the file
The sequence is fixed and cannot be reversed. The employer signs in to the Migration Agency online service and enters the employment details: occupation, place of work, working time percentage, salary, insurance and the length of the employment. Only then can the worker complete their own part of the application. A worker who applies before the employer has filed the details submits a case with nothing behind it, and that case sits still.
The offer of employment is not the employment contract. The offer is the document the Migration Agency tests, and it has to describe the employment that will actually start. If the contract later departs from the offer in salary, working time or occupation, the departure is what the agency sees at an extension, not the explanation for it.
The union opinion belongs to the same step. The relevant trade union, meaning the one that organises the occupation at that workplace, must be given the opportunity to comment on the terms of employment. The opinion is an assessment of whether salary, insurance cover and the remaining terms reach the level of the industry. The employer sends the material to the union and attaches the reply to the file. A union that does not reply is not in itself an obstacle, but a file with no trace that the union was asked is not complete.
What makes an application complete
The Migration Agency states for 2026 that it prioritises complete applications and that incomplete information is the most common cause of delay. That is the most useful sentence in the whole procedure, because it puts control over the timeline with the employer. A file that arrives complete sits in a faster queue than a file assembled through three rounds of requests for further information, and each round costs weeks.
| Item | Who files it | Common error |
|---|---|---|
| Employment details in the online service | Employer | Filed after the worker's application, so the case has no basis |
| Salary level and working time percentage | Employer | Full time salary stated for a part time role |
| Insurance held with a Swedish insurer | Employer | Taken out at the start date rather than at application |
| Union opinion on the terms | Employer requests, union replies | The request is never sent, or goes to the wrong union |
| Passport valid for the permit period | Worker | The passport expires during the period and shortens the permit |
The wrong union deserves a note of its own. The occupation at the workplace decides which organisation is relevant, not the employer's main line of business. A warehouse role in a food company and a warehouse role in an engineering company can fall to different unions. An opinion from the wrong counterpart serves no purpose in the file and is often discovered only after the case has been in processing for months.
The time and cost to plan for
Count the case in three blocks. Employer preparation, meaning setting the salary against the agreement rate, taking out the insurance and requesting the opinion, runs one to three weeks in practice depending on how fast the union replies. Migration Agency processing varies by occupation and case type and is measured in months, not weeks. Travel and entry follow, together with the practical steps around population registration and a coordination number.
The cost is the Migration Agency application fee, the insurance package across the full term of employment, and the internal hours the file consumes. The item most often underestimated is the request for further information: every request takes the case out of active processing and then back in, which can move the start date by a quarter without any single party having done anything obviously wrong.
Employer duties do not end when the permit is granted. What applies during the employment is set out in the employer sponsorship compliance chain, and the checks on the right to work in the EU right to work verification checks. The refusal grounds that recur, terms below the agreement level among them, are collected in the work permit refusal failure modes. Werklist works the chain for employers, described on the employers page.
The paper trail is not a formality running alongside the recruitment. It is the recruitment seen from the agency's side: an offer that matches reality, an opinion from the right union, and a file that is complete on the day it is submitted.
Keep reading
All posts →What a UK sponsor licence costs an employer in 2026
The Home Office charges £1,682 for a medium or large Worker sponsor licence, £525 per Certificate of Sponsorship and £1,320 a year in skills charge.
UK skilled worker salary thresholds and going rates 2026
The Home Office sets an hourly floor of GBP 17.13 under Table 1 of Appendix Skilled Occupations and GBP 12.82 under Table 2, each alongside the going rate.