Decline in recruitment to fields with many labor migrants

Oslo,Workers.Photo : Gorm Kallestad / NTB scanpix

The number of applicants to some of the types of vocational training has halved in less than ten years. The reason may be that any applicants face stiff competition from labor migrants when their training has ended, Klassekampen writes.

From 2007 to 2016 the recruitment to the vocational training of painters decreased by 59 percent, brickwork training by 64 percent and carpenter training by 29 percent. On a national basis, the number of applicants for vocational training for building and construction decreased by 28 percent during the same period.

– These numbers are dramatic. One of the remarkable things is that the decline in the number of applicants coincide with the  increase in the proportion of foreign nationals in these types of work, Hedda Haakestad, who is writing a thesis at   Oslo and Akershus University College  on the development in the building trades, told the newspaper.

Haakestad believes the labor migration that has taken place after several Eastern European countries were incorporated into the EU in 2004, represented a “supply shock”, which has weakened the bargaining power of workers.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today