Research and development (R&D) in Sweden 2015:
Sweden a big little R&D country 2015
Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2017-05-04 9.30
The latest figures on R&D available on OECD’s website reveal that Sweden is big in R&D for being such a small country. Even though Sweden cannot measure up to the bigger countries in terms of money spent in total or the number of full-time equivalents, a different story is told when one accounts for the size of the economy and population.
Expenditures on R&D amounted to SEK 137 million in Sweden in 2015. R&D expenditures have been increasing steadily for a long time, but has been stable at 3.3 percent of the GDP in recent years. To enable comparison among countries, a measurement that is often used is the purchasing power parity dollar (PPP$) per capita, which takes into account both the size of the economy and the population. Sweden had the second highest expenditure among OECD countries in 2015, second only to the US, measured in PPP$, as shown in the figure below.
Source: http://www.oecd.org/science/msti.htm. Data on Russia and China included.
Nordic dominance in R&D
In total, roughly 85 000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) were performed in Sweden in 2015 – the most among the Nordic countries, and 14th among OECD members. China boasted the largest number of FTEs in the data, 44 times as many as Sweden and a total of 3.76 million. When the figures are put in relation to the size of the labor force, however, it can be seen that the Nordic countries performed large amounts of R&D per thousand employees. Sweden is only in third place among Scandinavian countries with 16.18 R&D FTEs per thousand employees, and fourth place in total. Denmark was the only country to surpass 20.00, and the average in the OECD data was 11.63 in 2015.
Source: http://www.oecd.org/science/msti.htm. Data on Russia and China included.
Definitions and explanations
Intramural R&D
Activities carried out in Sweden by the organisation’s own personnel, or by consultants in an R&D project led by the organisation, where the organisation’s personnel have worked together with consultants. Intramural R&D includes R&D assigned by other parties.
R&D Expenditure
R&D expenditure includes current expenditure and investments for intramural R&D. Current expenditure refers to labour costs, consultant fees, and other current expenditures. Investments include Buildings, land and real estate, Machinery and equipment, and Software.
Person-year
A person-year is the work that one full-time employee does in one year. A full-time employee that spends half of their time on R&D in a year has therefore carried out 0.5 R&D person-years.
Publication
More statistics on R&D performance in Sweden is available in Statistics Sweden’s compilation Research and development in Sweden 2015. An overview.
Feel free to use the facts from this statistical news but remember to state Source: Statistics Sweden.