The return of foreign-born residents is believed to be the foremost reason for the surge in departures. Around 24 percent of the returnees were born in Asia, compared to 10 percent born in another Nordic country. A third of the total number of departures are nevertheless people born in Sweden.
Remarkably, the statistics from SCB also reflected a change in émigrés' preferences, which mirror the economic situation in Scandinavia. Conversely, Swedish emigration to Norway has decreased by 58 percent since 2011. Norway, which has, ever since the discovery of the vast oil and gas resources in the Norwegian Sea in 1960s, attracted fellow Northerners with huge salaries and career perspectives, is at present suffering from unemployment amid an economic slump, has become a much less desirable destination.
Since the 1940s, immigration to Sweden has continually outweighed emigration and has in recent decades became the major factor behind Sweden's population growth. In 2015, 1.6 million Swedish inhabitants were born abroad, equivalent to over 16 percent.
On the other hand, the US remains the country with the highest proportion of people of Swedish descent. At present, about eight million Americans have Swedish roots, of which 4.5 million have been confirmed as Swedish Americans. Most of them trace their ancestry from Swedish immigrants in the 19th century, when a total of 1.3 million Swedes settled in the US due to population growth, lack of industrial jobs and farmlands, as well as repetitive crop failures. Today, Minnesota remains the state with the most inhabitants of Swedish descent by a wide margin.
100 år sedan svensk formgav Coca-Cola-flaskan. Läs om 7 svenska utvandrare som gjorde avtryck.http://t.co/v9RwbQQtwV pic.twitter.com/XoyZwMBulJ
— Svenska Dagbladet (@SvD) 5 января 2015 г.
Among other, Swedish-born Alexander Samuelsson became famous for having designed the trademark curvy Coca-Cola bottle.