personnumre

Personnummer is the Swedish national identity number assigned to residents by the Swedish Tax Agency (Skatteverket). It is used across public and many private sector services to identify individuals for taxation, health care, social security, banking, employment, and other official processes. The system underpins coordination between authorities and service providers and is a central element of Swedish administrative practice.

The standard form combines a person’s birth date and a four-digit individual number. The most common written presentation is a 10-digit number with a separator, usually written as YYYYMMDD-XXXX (for example, 19900101-1234). In some contexts the number is stored or displayed without the separator as a 12-digit sequence. The birth date digits encode the person’s date of birth, and the four-digit serial helps distinguish people born on the same day.

Gender and age cues are embedded in the number: the parity of the last digit of the serial segment (the final digit) is commonly used to indicate gender in many ordinary contexts, with even numbers associated with female and odd numbers with male. However, the number is primarily an identifier, and gender is not a sole or definitive attribute.

Special variants exist for specific situations. A coordination number (samordningsnummer) can be issued to people who live in Sweden temporarily or have limited residency but require access to certain public services. This number follows a similar format but is issued for administrative purposes.

Privacy and data protection are central to the use of personnummer. Access and processing are governed by general data protection and privacy laws, and misuse or improper disclosure is subject to legal penalties.