Most Swedish local labour markets are geographically small. Each public employment services office defines a commuting area. Often, the shape of the commuting area appears to be influenced by the shape of the local labour market. The search area defined in the Swedish unemployment benefit rules (by the twelve-hour principle) most often includes the local labour market as well as the commuting area. Hence, the most frequent case is that the rules are not applied. Moreover, this indicates that jobseekers may face different mobility demands. It is also inferred that local labour markets is not the optimal spatial delimitation for studies of the unemployed persons search for a job.