Sweden Travel Guide
Demographics of Sweden

As of 2008, the total population of Sweden was estimated to be 9,234,209.[89] The population exceeded 9 million for the first time as of approximately 12 August 2004 according to Statistics Sweden. The population density is only 20 people per km² and it is substantially higher in the south and than in the north. About 85% of the population live in urban areas. The capital city Stockholm has a population of about 800,000 (with 1.3 million in the urban area and 2 million in the metropolitan area). The second and third largest cities are Gothenburg and Malmö.

Of the 2007 population 13.4% (1.23 million) were born abroad.[91] This reflects the inter-Nordic migrations, earlier periods of labour immigration, and later decades of refugee and family immigration. Sweden has been transformed from a nation of emigration ending after World War I to a nation of immigration from World War II onwards. In 2007, immigration reached its highest level since records began with 99,485 people moving to Sweden.

The largest immigrant groups living in Sweden as of 2007 consists of people born in Finland, followed by people born in the Former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Poland, Iran, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Turkey, Chile, Lebanon, Thailand, Somalia, the United Kingdom, Syria, China and the United States. In the last decade most immigrants have come from Iraq, Poland, Thailand, Somalia and China.

Immigration from the Nordic countries reached a peak of more than 40,000 per year in 1969–70 when the new immigration rules introduced in 1967 had made it more difficult for immigrants from outside the Nordic region to settle in Sweden for labour market policy reasons. Immigration by refugees and immigrating relatives of refugees from outside the Nordic region increased drastically during the late 1980s, with many of the immigrants arriving from Asia and America, especially from Iran and Chile. During the 1990s and onwards another large immigrant group came from former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. On December 15, 2008 new labour immigration rules came into effect making it easier to immigrate from outside of the European Union for labour market reasons. Most labour market immigrants so far are IT specialists and engineers from India, China and the US.

Source: Wikipedia Encyclopedia