Countries With the Highest Researchers

Every country with a figure for researchers, ranked from highest to lowest. The top three are Liechtenstein (18,130), Korea, Rep. (9,472) and Sweden (8,911). The middle country of the 134 has 764.

What this measures

Researchers in R&D (per million people). Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. For this measure, higher is better.

Researchers counted as full-time equivalents (two half-time researchers count as one), from national research surveys that many countries run only now and then. So coverage is thin outside the OECD.

This measure mostly follows how rich a country is, so this ranking is close to a ranking by national income. Each country’s page also ranks it against countries with similar incomes, which is often the fairer comparison.

The full ranking

Each country’s latest figure, from 2010–2024. The year beside each value says when it was measured.

More on researchers

• Countries With the Lowest Researchers
• Researchers by country: trend over time and what it goes with

Related rankings

• Countries With the Highest PISA Maths
• Countries With the Highest PISA Reading
• Countries With the Highest PISA Science
• Countries With the Highest Primary Completion
• Countries With the Highest Expected Schooling
• Countries With the Highest Mean Years of Schooling
• Countries With the Highest Education Spending
• Countries With the Highest Primary Enrollment

A ranking describes countries, not the people in them, and a high or low place does not by itself say why. All country rankings.