A newley published report, written by Statistics Norway on behalf of the Nordic Council of Ministers, analyzes fresh data on integration and migration in the Nordic region. It covers immigration to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden over the past six years.

In their introduction to the report, Statistics Norway writes the following summary: 

"As of 1 January 2022, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden had a total of just over 3.9 million immigrants and 1.2 million descendants. Together these groups accounted for 18 percent of the population in the four countries. Over half of the immigrants and descendants live in Sweden.

Looking at individual countries, the largest number of immigrants is from Syria (275,000), closely followed by Poland (251,000). Syria is the largest country of origin for immigrants in Sweden, while Poland is the largest in Denmark and Norway. In Finland, immigrants with a background from Estonia are the largest group at the start of 2022. The largest groups among descendants in the Nordic countries have parents from Iraq, Finland, Turkey, Somalia, Syria and Poland.

Net immigration to the Nordic region shows a marked upward trend, driven by labour immigration, refugee flows and changes in immigration policy. In 2022, net immigration reached its highest level of 212,200, with most Nordic countries, except Sweden, reporting their highest net immigration figures that year. The war in Ukraine was a significant factor behind this increase. However, it is important to interpret these figures with caution, as there are variations in registration practices between the Nordic countries. Although these countries have reliable registers, there are discrepancies in migration data, especially when it comes to the registration of Ukrainians.

In the report, integration is operationalised by measuring participation in education and work. In Finland, Norway and Sweden, around 30 percent of immigrants aged 16-29 years participated in upper secondary education, while participation in higher education among immigrants was generally lower in all three countries. In Denmark, participation among immigrants in upper secondary education is only 13 percent in 2021, and 19 percent in higher education. Descendants participate in education significantly more frequently than immigrants.

Among immigrants aged 20-64, the employment rate is generally lower than for the rest of the population in the Nordic countries in 2021. Descendants aged 20-44 have somewhat higher employment rates than immigrants but they are still significantly lower than the level of the rest of the population. Both similarities and differences between reporting countries and the different immigrant groups are noted. Finland has the lowest employment rates for immigrants, while Norway has the highest. Immigrants with a background from Africa and Asia have lower employment rates compared to immigrants from other parts of the world.

There are large differences in employment between immigrants with a short residence period, but in all countries the differences between immigrants from different parts of the world decrease as the period of residence increases. For Sweden, employment increases continuously with residence, so that those with more than 15 years of residence have the highest employment rate. In Denmark and Norway, however, we see a small decrease in the proportion of employed people after more than 15 years of residence.

Immigrants aged 20-29 have significantly higher proportions who are neither in employment, education nor training (NEET) than descendants, and the level is about twice as high as in the rest of the population. Immigrant women have consistently higher NEET rates than immigrant men in all countries. Among descendants, however, we see the opposite pattern, where women have lower NEET rates than men."

The report can be downloaded from Statistics Norway, where you'll also find previous reports from the project. 

Data

The Nordic Statistics Database has twelve matrices on Integration and Migration, covering three main areas: Population, Education and the Labour market. The data in these are a result of a project called “Nordic comparative measures on migration and integration”, financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers, which has been ongoing since 2015. The goal of this Nordic co-operation project has been to harmonize immigration and integration statistics among the Nordic countries and produce comparable statistics.

The first results were published in 2018, eleven matrices with three years of data in each. A twelfth matrix was published in 2021. All twelve have now been updated with three more years, a more detailed list of country background has been added and percentages are reported together with the corresponding absolute values.

Data for Iceland will be added in the future, the delivery has been delayed due to a revision of the method for estimating the population at Statistics Iceland.