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To get a permanent residence permit, you must be able to support yourself through income from employment or your own company, or a combination of the two. You may add together income from one or more part-time jobs, provided that all the positions meet the below requirements and the total income is sufficient to be able to support yourself financially.

Your ability to support yourself must be sustainable

You must be able to show that you can support yourself financially for a long time to come. If you do not have a permanent position, we always make an individual assessment of whether your income is reliable.

Your employment must be serious. For example, the Swedish Migration Agency can check that your employer is able to pay you the wages/salary you specified in your application.

People who support themselves financially through self-employment must demonstrate that their company has realistic business plans and stable finances, so that you can be expected to be able to support yourself through your profits for a considerable period of time.

Only the income you actually have when we consider your application counts. You cannot get a permanent residence permit based on your chances of getting another job or higher income sometime in the future.

What income counts?

You may only count taxed income from legal employment. This means that you must have permission to work or be exempt from the requirement to have a work permit. You may not count undeclared income, nor income from a profession that you are not licensed to practise.

You may count parental benefits or sickness benefits, provided that you have ongoing employment and your parental leave or sick leave is not assessed to be longer than 12 months.

To count income from your business, you must show that you own at least half of the company and that you have decisive responsibility for its operations. It is also required that you run the company professionally, independently and for profit.

If you wait too long to apply for a permanent residence permit (after your current permit has expired), you will not have the right to work while you wait for a decision and therefore will not meet the maintenance requirement.

Amount of income

Your income after tax must be high enough so that after you pay your monthly housing costs, you still have a certain amount of money left over that can cover the costs of food, clothing, hygiene, telephone, electricity, and insuring yourself, among other things. In 2024, that amount is SEK 6,090 per month for a single adult. If you have a child with whom you do not live and you pay maintenance to the child’s other parent, your wages/salary must also be sufficient to cover their maintenance allowance.

The housing costs that your wages must be sufficient to cover each month depend on the type of home in which you live:

• If you live in a rented flat, you must include both the rent and the cost of water and heating in this calculation, if the latter are not included in the rent.
• If you live in a tenant-owner flat, you must include any fees paid to the tenant-owner association and the interest on any home loans in your calculation. You must also include necessary operating costs (such as water and heating), if these are not included in the monthly fee.
• If you live in a freestanding house, you must include the interest rate for any home loans and necessary operating costs (such as water and heating) in your calculation.

Amortisation of home loans is not included in housing costs.

You only need to be able to support yourself, not your family members. If you live alone or with underage children, you must include your entire actual housing costs in your calculation. However, if you live with one or more other adults, you should divide your actual housing costs by the number of adults in the household and only include your share in the calculation, no matter how much each person actually pays for your housing.

What income does not count?

You may not count income from

• a family member
• wealth or returns from capital
• unemployment insurance or activity compensation
• various forms of grants or scholarships
• subsidised employment (for example, when the Swedish Social Insurance Agency or the Swedish Public Employment Service pays all or part of the wages)

Pensions do not count as income either, but people who receive a pension may be exempt from the requirement that they must be able support themselves financially.

Exemptions from the maintenance requirement

Exemptions from the maintenance requirement can be made if

• you are under the age of 18 when the Swedish Migration Agency makes a decision
• you are entitled to a pension
• you are unable to support yourself financially on other special grounds.

If you can submit a decision from the Swedish Pensions Agency that shows that you are entitled to an income-based retirement pension, guarantee pension, or financial support for the elderly, then you are exempt from the requirement to be able to support yourself financially. It is the right to a pension that is crucial, not whether you actually take out a pension or the size of your pension. Both guarantee pensions and financial support for the elderly can be paid out no sooner than the month you turn 66. Income-based old-age pensions can be paid out no sooner than the month you turn 63. If you have reached the age of 63 but not 66, you must show that you have retired and started to take out your income-based old-age pension. It is your age on the date of the decision that matters.

Exemptions from the maintenance requirement may also be made if other special grounds exist which are not temporary. For example, you may be unable to meet the maintenance requirement on the grounds of permanently impaired working capacity, for example due to illness or disability. This can also apply if you are unemployed and so close to retirement age that it is difficult to get a new job. Exemptions can also be granted if it is not reasonable to request that you be able to support yourself financially. For example, such exemptions are granted for monks and nuns.

If you believe that you have special grounds for exemption from the maintenance requirement, please attach documents showing that you have, for example, a permanently impaired ability to work. Such proof may take the form of an investigation by the Swedish Public Employment Service, a decision on entitlement to sickness benefits, sickness benefits or activity compensation from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, or a medical certificate.

In order to get a permanent residence permit in Sweden, it is important that you cannot be assumed to commit a crime in the future. For this reason, it is a requirement that applicants for a permanent residence permit can be expected to live a well-behaved life. To be able to assess this, the Swedish Migration Agency needs to look at how you have lived so far, for example if you have been convicted or suspected of any crime in Sweden or abroad.

There are no detailed rules on the types of crimes or the length of the penalty that may prevent a person from being granted a permanent residence permit. It is not only serious crimes that are taken into account. Even less serious ones can be an obstacle, if you misbehaved in other ways at the same time.

If there is reason to suspect that you will not live a well-behaved life in the future, the Swedish Migration Agency will weigh these concerns against the reasons for granting you a permanent residence permit. We take into account how you have misbehaved and how long ago the events took place.

Exemptions to this so-called “good conduct qualification” are made only for children under the age of 15.