Ylva Johansson is a Social Democrat and was previously deputy leader for the labour market committee in the Swedish parliament.
She is 49 years old, married with three children aged 12 18 and 18 and she has three grown up bonus children, as she puts it.
She has previously been both Minister for Education and Minister for Social Affairs, and is not considered a surprising choice as Minister for Employment.
In her own blog she writes about most of the labour market issues raised by Löfven in his speech to parliament. Under the heading “A new policy is needed for matching” she criticises her predecessors for failing to recruit unemployed people to jobs which are available on the labour market. In September she raised the issue of wage equality. “I am so tired of the fact that women earn less than men,” she writes: “Despite having the same education and the same job, women are often paid less than men. An efficient way of dealing with this is to introduce an annual mapping of workplace salary trends,” which is just what it says in the new government’s programme.
Margot Wallström was not an unknown candidate for the foreign affairs job either. Her long experience from the EU has also given her responsibility for EU issues in the new government.