The trend continues: More people are moving from Stockholm than they are

Stockholm grows with two bus loads every day, they usually say. But is that so? It is true that Stockholm is growing, but not because of migration flows within the country, but through immigration and births.

In fact, there are now more people choosing to move from Stockholm County than into the county. In 2018, a trend breach occurred when the county received a negative “net transfer” for the first time in 15 years, according to Statistics Sweden. Moving net is the number of people moved in minus the number of people moved out.

43,882 people moved into the county while 44,079 left. This means that 197 people left Stockholm County more than they moved there.

And the trend continues.

During the first three quarters of 2018, there were 23 more people moving from Stockholm County than to. The corresponding figure for the same period in 2019 was 983 persons, shows fresh figures from Statistics Sweden.

- What we have seen in recent years is that the migration to Stockholm County has increased to a lesser extent than the relocation, but during 2018 the migrations decreased while the relocations continued to increase. Then the gap gets bigger, says Tomas Johansson, investigator at Statistics Sweden's Department of Population and Welfare.

Among children and adults over the age of 30, more people leave Stockholm County, while the ages 19-29 are the opposite.

- What you can see based on age composition is that many families leave children in the county. It is the same for Stockholm municipality.

So where do you move when you leave Stockholm? Not so far away, according to Statistics Sweden's statistics.

- We see two different patterns. Half of those who leave the county at the preschool age, who are born in Stockholm, move to the parents' country of birth. You move to your social network when the children start preschool or school. We also see a large relocation to crane municipalities such as Knivsta, Håbo, Norrtälje and Gnesta. It is close to Stockholm and relatively low costs to obtain housing, says Tomas Johansson.

With regard to Stockholm municipality, the same trend has been observed, with more emigrants than immigrants, since 2014. However, in the first three quarters of 2019, there has been a decrease in net outflows from Stockholm municipality to the crane municipalities in Stockholm County. The move in has thus increased more than the move out, which has reduced the gap, but still more people move out than in.