Swedens ‘net emigration’ is the result of a lag in the tax authority’s de-registering of citizens leaving the country, and should not be taken to mean migrants are now leaving the country in higher numbers than they’re arriving, according to migration-critical media outlet Samnytt.
The numbers presented by the Moderate-led government that we reported last week come from Statistics Sweden, the national statistics agency. While those numbers show a net emigration for the first five months of the year, that does not mean more people emigrated than immigrated. Statistic Sweden’s press spokesman Johannes Cleris told Samnytt that the Swedish Tax Agency since last summer has been working on a cleanup of its population register to deregister individuals who are incorrectly registered in the country.
According to Statistic Sweden, 36,000 people emigrated from Sweden during the first five months of this year, leaving the country—on paper—with a net emigration of 5,672 people. But that’s not the whole story, Samnytt says.
“This cleanup work that the Swedish Tax Agency is doing in the registers affects the emigration figures, but we don’t know by how much. You’ll have to ask the Tax Agency about that,” Cleris told the news outlet, adding, “Our expert has previously said that emigration is likely lower than the figures indicate.”
From May 2023 to 26th of June 2024, the Tax Authority deregistered 18,695 persons who, according to section chief Cajsa Toresten are “people who were registered here but have already moved back to their home country” without notifying authorities. She said the agency cleanup has deregistered 7,000 people—roughly 1,000 every month—since the beginning of the year. Looking at the figures presented by the government, that would negate the ‘net emigration’ given that these people had already left Sweden, and just not been registered as no longer residing in the country.
“Sweden does have a relatively low net immigration, but in reality, more people still immigrate to Sweden than emigrate from it,” Samnytt concludes,
