Someone told me that in Sweden, they work for a year or two then they get 1 year off work, and thet get paid 80% of what they would have made if they were working. Is this true?
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Sort of, and not any more. It was an experiment, and only ran for a couple of years. The participants recieved 85% of the _unemployment benefit_ they would have received if they were unemployed (which is certainly a lot less than 85% of their salary!) but were guaranteed their job back at the end of it. The idea was that long term unemployed people could take their place, get current work experience, a current reference, and a year of good earning, while people working could take a year off to do something they found interesting, without risking losing their job over it. The scheme ran as a limited scheme(10 cities) from 2002 to 2004 initially, then as a state scheme (nationally) 2005 to 2007. It was finally shut down after the change of government at the last election, and there was quite a lot of criticism that the scheme didn't reach the right target groups among other things. There were several academic studies going on around it, to study the effects on job seekers, the people who took a year off, how it affected the businesses that were involved etc.
