Employment among immigrants, register-based, 2005, 4th quarter

Male immigrants had an employment rate at 62.5 per cent, while the female immigrants had 52.6 per cent employed. In the population as a whole the rates were 72.6 and 66.0 per cent respectively. The increase in the employment came mainly among male immigrants at 1.5 percentage points. Among females the increase was only 0.4 percentage points.

Persons born abroad by foreign- born parents are regarded as immigrants. He or she must also be registered as resident in Norway for at least six months. Figures concerning employed persons on short term stay are also recently published ( http://www.ssb.no/kortsys_en/ ).

New EU countries on western level

Immigrants from the new EU countries were more likely to be employed than immigrants from rest of East-Europe with 68.6 versus 56.2 per cent. They also had the strongest growth among all immigrants with 4 percentage points. This growth has raised their level of employment to that of the western European immigrants except the Nordic countries. Immigrants from the Nordic countries had, as usual, the highest employment rate of 72.4 per cent. This also exceeds the total employment level in Norway. African immigrants had the lowest rate of 41.8 per cent. Among the non-western immigrants, immigrants from South- and Central America had the highest employment rate with 60 per cent, while immigrants from Asia had a rate of 50.6 per cent.

Residence of four years or more enhances the employment

The employment among immigrants increases clearly after four years of residence in Norway. Among immigrants who have lived in Norway four years or less, the employment rate is 47.6 per cent, while those with four to six years of residence had a rate which was more than10 percentage points higher. In the next group, those with seven years of residence or more, the employment rate is only two percentage points higher, but within the underlying non-western groups of immigrants there is a stronger increase. On the contrary, among western immigrants with seven years of residence or more the employment rate decreases. This phenomenon is, however, related to the relative higher portions of elderly within these groups.

High employment rate also among some non-westerners

If we look at single nationalities, some non-western groups had a relative high level of employment. For instance, immigrants from Chile, The Philippines, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Romaina and Croatia all had an employment rate above 60 per cent, which places them close to immigrants from many western countries. Immigrants from Somalia and Afghanistan had the lowest rates with 28.2, and 34 per cent respectively. This low level must be connected to the relative high shares of refugees with short time of residence in Norway within these two groups. On the contrary, the six groups mentioned above had relative large portions of long time residents in Norway.

Duration of residence do not explain all differences

Despite these tendencies, we also find a relatively low employment rate among immigrant groups with a long duration of residence in Norway. Immigrants form Pakistan, the largest non-western group, had a rate at only 44.6 per cent. This rate is a result of a very low employment level among the females. Among women from Pakistan the employment rate was 28 per cent versus 60 per cent among the men. Also among the relative established immigrants from Turkey we find a low rate, at 49 per cent, which is due to a considerable gender difference, 37 per cent among women versus 57 among the men.

Health and social services is the largest group

We find many similarities among employed non-westerners and employed in total, as for instance the portions according to manufacturing, retail trade, transport and communication and health and social services. The last mentioned group is moreover the largest industry group irrespective of immigrant background. But on the other hand, the non-western immigrants had a much higher share of their employees within hotels and restaurants compared to the whole working population. On the national level we find 3.3 per cent of all employed persons within this industry, while the employed non-western immigrants had 12 per cent . We find an even more biased pattern as industrial cleaning is concerned, 0.8 per cent among employed in total versus 6.3 per cent among employed non-western immigrants worked within this industry.

Many non-westerners within elementary occupations

The register-based employment statistics now also include distribution by occupation. However, employed persons within the health enterprises and municipal and county administration are not yet included in the tables with distribution by occupation. The distribution based on 9 main groups of occupation reveal that non- western employees had a high share within the group of elementary occupations (i.e. occupations without educational demands). 24 per cent of the non-western employees worked in this group versus 6.3 per cent in the entire working population (with information of occupation). The western employees are more likely to work within professional occupations. 18.6 per cent of this group had such occupations compared with 10.5 per cent in the whole working population. The non-western workers had a percentage of 6.3 within these occupations.

Private sector has the highest share of immigrants.

Distributions by economic sector show that private sector has the largest share of non-western employees with 5.1 per cent. The municipal and county sector had a share of 4.5 per cent, while the state sector had 3.2 per cent. This distribution must be related to the distributions based on industries and occupations, while the state sector has a larger portion of academic occupations than the private sector.

Norwegian born by foreign-born immigrants

This group had a total employment rate of 55.9 per cent, which was 1.6 percentage points below the level of the first generation. In absolute numbers the employed Norwegian born counted 8 566 people. One must, however, take into consideration that 60 per cent of this group were between 16 and 25 years old (based on the 16 to 74 years population). This is in other words a young group and many of them are likely to be students/pupils not included in the labour force. If we, however, look at the group of employed aged 25 to 39 years (3 084 people), we find a rate of 72.8 per cent, which is 10 percentage points higher than the level in the same age group among the first generation immigrants.

Tables:

• Table 1 Employed by immigrant background, region of birth and sex . Q4 2004 and Q4 2005. Per cent of persons aged 16-74 years and in absolute figures
• Table 2 Employed by immigrant background, region of birth and age. Q4 2005. Per cent of persons aged 16-74 years and in absolute figures
• Table 3 Employed by immigrant background, region of birth, sex and labour market status. Q4 2005. Per cent of persons aged 16-74 years in each group and in absolute figures
• Table 4 Employed first generation immigrants by region of birth and years of residence in Norway. Q4 2004 and Q4 2005. Per cent of persons aged 16-74 years and in absolute figures
• Table 5 Employed first generation immigrants, by years of residence in Norway, age and region of birth. Per cent of persons aged 16-74 years in each group and in absolute figures. Q4 2005
• Table 6 Employed aged 16-74 years by selected industries, immigrant background and region of birth. Q4 2005. Per cent
• Table 7 Self employed immigrants aged 16-74 years by selected industries and region of birth. Q4 2005. Per cent
• Table 8 Self-employed immigrants 16-74 years, by selected industries and region of birth. Q4 2004. Per cent and absolute numbers
• Table 9 Employed first generation immigrants by selected countries of birth. Absolute figures and in per cent of persons in total 16-74 years. Q4 2004 and 2005
• Table 10 Employees by immigrant-background and economic sector. Q4 2004 and 2005
• Table 11 Employees by occupational groups and region of birth. Q4 2004 and 2005