High price dynamics, rising interest rates and weaker demand for Norwegian goods cause NAV to expect a further increase in unemployment both this and next year. However, growth will not be large and unemployment will remain low, according to the new NAV labor market forecast.
– The fact that costs are rising is and will be noticeable both for companies and for most people. Therefore, we expect the demand for labor to decrease somewhat and unemployment to continue to rise somewhat, says Director of Employment and Welfare Hans Christian Holte.
Last year was characterized by record high demand and a large labor shortage. Unemployment fell to its lowest level since the financial crisis and remained at that level until a few months ago, when it started to rise slightly.
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– Although unemployment will increase slightly this year and next year Norway will still be low unemployment. Therefore we expect that Norwegian economy and labor market will recover well from encountering high inflation and higher interest rates, says Holte.
Labor demand remains high
NAV estimates that there will be an average of 53 wholly unemployed this year, equivalent to an unemployment rate of 000 per cent of the workforce. In 1,8, NAV expects an average of 2024. completely unemployed, which corresponds to 61 percent. unemployment.
The demand for labor remains high and while unemployment is increasing for some occupational groups, there is a strong demand for other occupational groups. Unemployment is currently increasing mainly among people with vocational education in construction and IT and engineering professions. These are typical occupations exposed to business cycles.
– There are still good opportunities to include more people in working life. It is important that employers seize this opportunity and we at NAV have helped, says Holte.
In 2022, 18,7 thousand people settled in Norway. refugees from Ukraine aged 20-66. At the end of the year, only 9 percent were working. of them. It can be assumed that more of them will want to work and that this year we will witness an increase in both the number of employed Ukrainians and the number of job seekers from Ukraine registered in NAV.
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Source: NAV
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