Registered unemployment among immigrants decreased from 7.1 per cent in November 2010 to 6.1 per cent in November 2011. In the rest of the population, this rate decreased from 2.1 to 1.8 per cent.
The decrease occurred mainly among men, both within the immigrant group and the population as a whole, with a decline of 1.8 and 0.4 percentage points respectively. The unemployment rate was unchanged among immigrant women, while it declined marginally among women in the rest of the population.
This tendency is due to a stronger fall in unemployment in the male dominated occupations within construction and manufacturing, compared to the female dominated occupations in the public sector. Hence, the registered unemployment rate among female immigrants is somewhat higher than the rate among the male immigrants; 6.3 versus 5.9 per cent. In the whole population, men still have the highest rate; 2.1 versus 1.6 per cent among women.
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Immigrants are defined as being born abroad by foreign-born parents, and they are all registered as residents in Norway. Among the registered unemployed, some non-registered residents are also included. These people are settled abroad and are expected to stay in Norway for less than six months. This group is not included with the immigrants but is a part of the rest of the population. See the table below on this page for further information. The unemployment figures are based on the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Organisation’s register of jobseekers and are calculated as a fraction of the labour force. Norwegian-born to immigrant parents (previously referred to as “descendants”) are not counted as immigrants. |
| November 2010 | November 2011 | Change 2010-2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Registered unemployed in total | 69 365 | 61 595 | -7 770 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unemployed registered as residents | 67 601 | 60 203 | -7 398 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Of which | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Immigrants | 21 010 | 19 698 | -1 312 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The rest of the population | 46 591 | 40 505 | -6 086 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unemployed not registered as residents | 1 764 | 1 392 | -372 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Immigrants from the EU countries in Eastern Europe had the strongest decrease in the registered unemployment rate; of 2.6 percentage points from the 4th quarter of 2010 to the 4th quarter of 2011. The other immigrant groups had declines between 0.1 percentage points (Western Europe) and 0.9 percentage points (Africa).
Immigrants from Africa still had the highest level in the fourth quarter of 2011, at 12.5 per cent. Then came immigrants from Asia with an unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent. Immigrants from Eastern Europe outside the EU and Latin America had almost equal rates; 6.6 and 6.5 per cent respectively, while the group from the EU countries in Eastern Europe had a rate of 5.9 per cent. As usual, there is a wide gap to the groups from the Nordic countries and Western Europe, which have considerably lower unemployment rates; 2.4 and 2.8 per cent respectively. The smallest immigrant group, those from North America and Oceania, had the lowest rate at 2.3 per cent.
The high level of unemployment among Africans is partly due to the dominance of refugees within this group. African immigrants have for several years had the highest registered unemployment rate irrespective of the economic cycles.
The number of immigrants on ordinary labour market schemes (job programmes) increased from
6 413 in November 2010 to 8 321 in November 2011, i.e. an increase of 1 908 participants. When looking at the rates of unemployed and participants on labour market schemes put together, there is still a declining tendency among the immigrants during the relevant period. We can also observe the same tendency among non-immigrants, where the number of participants increased from 9 032 to
10 687; an increase of 1 655 participants.
Norwegian-born to immigrant parents is still a rather small group of unemployed. This group constituted 741 registered unemployed in November 2011. The majority within this group are aged 15-29 years, and the unemployment rate among them was 4.5 per cent, which was 1.4 percentage points higher than the corresponding age group in the majority population (at 3.1 per cent), but 2.3 percentage points below the immigrant group at the same age (at 6.8 per cent). Of these three young population groups, the immigrants had the strongest decline since November 2010, of 0.9 percentage points.
Published 8 February 2012 © Statistics Norway