Income and wealth percentile in Sweden

What the numbers say about Sweden.

Swedish median income is around SEK 629,000 per adult, roughly $59,000 at current exchange rates. The average sits at SEK 757,000. The income distribution itself looks moderate by international standards, with the top 1% threshold at SEK 2.77 million, well below the equivalent in Switzerland or the United States. The reputation for equality still holds on the wage side, supported by strong sectoral wage agreements and a labour market with high union coverage.

Wealth tells a story the income figures do not. Median household net worth per adult is around SEK 945,000, but the average runs over SEK 5.2 million. The top 1% threshold for wealth sits above SEK 49 million, and the top 0.1% above SEK 312 million. Sweden has one of the most concentrated top-end wealth distributions in Europe today, partly because the country abolished its wealth tax in 2007 and its inheritance tax in 2004. A generation of private-equity, listed-company founders, and venture-backed tech operators have built fortunes that would have been politically unthinkable in 1980s Sweden.

Housing and pension assets shape the middle of the distribution. Swedish homeownership runs around 65 percent, with the rest in a tenant-cooperative system or in the shrinking municipal-rental sector. Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö have all seen sharp property-price rises since 2013. The premium-pension system, where workers direct part of their mandatory contributions into investment funds, has become a meaningful wealth component for the cohort approaching retirement. Both factors lift median wealth well above what wages alone would suggest.

Stockholm pulls disproportionately on high-end income. The capital region holds tech, finance, consulting, and a disproportionate share of corporate headquarters. Spotify, Klarna, and a long tail of venture-backed firms have produced equity-rich employees who show up at the top of the distribution. Outside the metropolitan areas, median wages are reasonably uniform across the country, partly because of national wage bargaining.

Two themes shape the next decade. The end of zero-rate interest in 2022 has cooled the property market, exposing households that took on heavy mortgage debt during the boom. And immigration policy has tightened sharply, which may slow the labour-supply expansion the economy relied on for a decade.