The purpose of this paper is to sketch the demographic, social and economic development of Eskilstuna, the site of a sociolinguistic investigation of variation and change under comparison with a similar study conducted in the latter half of the 1960's. The community suffers from stagnating, even decreasing, population figures and a receding economy with high unemployment and heavy social allowances compared with communities of equal size. The economic structure has undergone a very pronounced change from a main focus on cutlery and steel industry to administration and service industries. Possible sociolinguistic consequences of this state of things are discussed.