Can foundational economy save regions in crisis?

We perform, to our best knowledge, the first systematic mapping of the foundational economy (FE) at the sub-national level by looking at the FE employment in Swedish regions between 2007 and 2016. We show that the FE itself not only suffered less than traded activities from employment decline during the Great Recession of 2007–2009 but was also a domain of substantial job creation in the post-crisis recovery. At the same time, regions with higher dependence on foundational employment were hit harder during the crisis in terms of overall labour market performance. We demonstrate that it is specific compositions of foundational and traded activities in the regional employment mix that relate differently to regional employment growth in times of crisis and recovery. Jointly, these findings allow us to contribute to the literatures on the FE and regional resilience.