Wait, really? I briefly looked at Cobol job ads in Sweden (just for fun to see what's out there -- not actually looking for a Cobol job right now) recently and they were all looking for people with multiple years of production Cobol maintenance. I must have missed something obvious.

Other requirement is "Proficient in Swedish and English, verbal and written"!

Heck, that's more than what it takes to receive Swedish citizenship, for which Sweden has no language, income, employment, or skills requirement. <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>

In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden. <https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_po...>

Ignoring English seems a little silly. Doesn't modern standard Arabic function as a lingua franca between people who natively speak something else (even if mutually unintelligible local Arabics)? That would explain it's popularity, but on those grounds English would be even more popular.