The largest population increase is outside urban areas in Södermanland and Jönköping counties with 1,200 people each. The same trend can also be seen in, for example, Norrbotten county.
At the same time, urban areas in other places continue to grow.
"More than every third person of Sweden's total population lived in one of the ten largest urban areas in 2023," says Karin Hedeklint, statistician at SCB, in a press release.
This means that a third of all Swedes live on 0.3 percent of Sweden's land area. Last year, 88 percent of the country's population was registered in an urban area, a development that has been ongoing since the 19th century.
The largest population decrease outside urban areas was in Skåne county, with a decline of around 3,000 people.
In the statistics from SCB, an urban area is defined as a residential area with at least 200 registered inhabitants and dense housing.
