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In recent years, Skellefteå has had significant population growth linked to the establishment of Northvolt. Between 2020 and 2023, the population growth in Skellefteå was 4.6 percent, which should be compared with an average population growth of 1.7 percent in Sweden. The main purpose of the report has been to describe how the labor market in Skellefteå has changed after 2017. The population growth can largely be explained by a sharp increase in immigration. For many years, the municipality has indeed had a positive net migration which, however, has not been able to compensate for the aging population. Therefore, the population has remained at stable levels until 2017. The strong immigration in recent years is mainly made up of men aged 25 to 64. In general, the proportion of men in the age range 15 to 64 is increasing, while the number of women aged 15 to 24 is decreasing, which may pose a future challenge connected to how to break the negative nativity trend. Even before 2017, Skellefteå had a high proportion of men, and the reduction in the number of women aged 15 to 24 may in the long run lead to a further distortion of the gender balance. A large part of the immigrants has for a long time consisted of people from the immediate area (mainly Umeå, but also smaller municipalities). This trend continues after 2017, when the number of migrants from Umeå increased even further. A significant part of the immigrants are also primarily men, but also women, from other countries. This too can pose a future challenge if they are not integrated into society. Those who move to Skellefteå often get jobs that only require shorter training or introduction. This has increased since the establishment of Northvolt regardless of education level. At the same time, the degree of job changes is high among these immigrants, which indicates that these occupations are entry-level occupations. We also see that emigration has also increased in recent years, and this mainly concerns women

In the north of Sweden a lot of the municipalities struggle with depopulation and a negative developmental spiral. Lately there has been a lot of cases where this can change when new investments and establishments are introduced to the area. This study has examined how the rural municipality of Sollefteå has worked with attracting new investments and the added new workload to a municipality with limited resources. To achieve this, interviews has been carried out with people who work with these issues at Sollefteå municipality. A study has also been done on existing planning documents from Sollefteå municipality to gain an understanding of their vision and limitations. The study showed that Sollefteå municipality has advocated for their strengths and been able to attract investments and has been chosen as one of the places where Sweden’s military has been re-established. As there has been a very low need for planning in Sollefteå the last few decades one of the main challenges is to pave the way for the establishments that wish to make Sollefteå municipality their home in terms of new detailed development plans as well to ensure housing for the added workforce that would be needed in the future.