Nav forecasts lower unemployment

NAV Social security fraud, NAV Rule labour marketNAV.Photo: Norway Today Media

Nav expects the fall in unemployment to continue throughout the year,and through next year, but at a calmer rate than during the recently past period of time.

 

Nav’s new labour market forecast shows several points of light for the Norwegian economy.
* New growth in oil investments this year and next year.

* Higher growth internationally and a continued low krone exchange rate that contributes to increased exports of Norwegian goods and services.

* Higher employment and increased wage growth that will contribute to further growth in consumption this year and next year.

Falling housing investment, however, is drawn as something that will adversely affect labour market developments.

“We have seen a clear improvement in the labour market for over a year.Employment rose in 2017, and in the first quarter of this year it increased sharply. In the future, we expect somewhat higher growth in the Norwegian economy than we had last year. This will increase the demand for labour, but also to more people reporting on the labour market.Therefore, we expect unemployment to continue to fall until the end of 2019, but more slowly than this year,” said Sigrun Vågeng,Minister for Labour and Welfare.

Nav expects that the number registered as fully unemployed will drop from 74,000 averaged last year to 64,000 this year. This corresponds to an unemployment rate of 2.3% of the workforce, versus 2.7 % last year.For the year 2019, Nav expects an average of 62,000 fully unemployed,corresponding to 2.2% of the workforce.

‘’This will be the lowest unemployment rate since before the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008,. It is also low from a historical perspective.Since Nav started the registrations of unemployment in 1948, the cut has been 2.2%. Looking at the past 30 years, the average has been 3.3%’’ said Vågeng.

 

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