New figures from Statistics Sweden show that the number of Indians leaving Sweden has risen in the past three years, from 1,600 in 2022 to 3,500 in 2023, landing on 4,500 in 2024. All numbers in this article are rounded to the nearest 100.
Figures released in mid-2024 for the first half of the year showed that more Indians were leaving than moving to Sweden, which if it had continued throughout the remainder of the year would have been the first case of negative Indian net migration in at least two decades.
The new figures show that, once the second half of the year is also accounted for, net migration of Indians moving to to Sweden remained positive, despite the fact the number of Indians leaving the country rose in 2024 and the number of Indians moving to the country fell over the same period.
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In 2022, 8,100 Indians moved to Sweden. That number fell to 7,500 in 2023 and 5,800 in 2024. This puts Indians in third place when it comes to nationalities moving to Sweden, behind people born in Sweden (11,900) and Ukraine (28,100). Behind India came Germany, China, Syria, Poland Pakistan, Turkey and Iran.
The large number of Ukrainians, Statistics Sweden writes, is due to the fact that Ukrainians who were living in Sweden under the EU's temporary protection directive were from June 2024 able to apply for a personal number in Sweden, formally registering them in the statistics as having moved to the country.
A total of 116,200 people moved to Sweden in 2024.
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The Swedish population grew by 0.3 percent, despite the fact that 2024 saw the fewest children born in Sweden in 22 years. The increase is primarily down to the fact that more people moved to Sweden than away from Sweden ‒ 29,700 more, to be exact. Despite this, 2024 was among the years with the lowest population increase in percent since the turn of the millennium.
There were also 7,200 more births than deaths in the country in 2024.
A total of 86,400 people moved away from Sweden in 2024 ‒ an increase of 13,000, or 18 percent, on 2023. More than a quarter, 28 percent, of these were registered as moving to "unknown country," the destination which was used by the Tax Agency when it began de-registering people who no longer live in Sweden from the population register in 2023. This work continued into 2024, so many of those registered as leaving may have left prior to last year, with their departure only being registered this year.
The most common destinations for those leaving Sweden last year, aside from "unknown country", were Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, the United States, Spain, Poland, Finland, India and Iraq.
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