The following three sub-populations are compared:

  1. Those who arrived in Norway as immigrants from Eastern Europe outside the EU, Asia, Africa and South and Central America.
  2. Those born in Norway to immigrant parents with a background from the corresponding world regions.
  3. People with a non-immigrant background.

The immigrant group in this report do not represent the Norwegian-born´s immigrant parents, but consists of immigrants at the same age as the Norwegian-born to immigrant parents. Hence, we intend to describe the significance of being born in Norway by immigrant parents as opposed to immigrate oneself. We do consequently not describe differences among generations.

The shares of actives were in 2022 as follows: People with a non-immigrant background: 89.9 per cent, Norwegian- born to immigrant parents: 87.3 per cent and immigrants: 72.1 per cent. Those under education enhances the level among Norwegian-born to immigrant parents, due to the large portion aged 16-25 years (60 per cent). Among those aged 30 years or more the disparity to the non-immigrant population is some larger than among the younger groups.

Norwegian-born to immigrant parents and the non-immigrant population had an increase in the share of actives from 2021 to 2022 of 0.9 and 0.3 percentage points respectively, while immigrants had a decrease of 2 percentage points. This was due to the rush of refugees from Ukraine during 2022.

Norwegian born women to immigrant parents had 88.8 per cent actives, which was 3 percentage points higher compared to men in the same population group. This disparity was due to a higher share in education among the women younger than 30 years. Among immigrants there was a significant difference in favour of men (76.9 vs. 67.6 per cent). In the rest of the population men and women had both a share of actives at approximately 90 per cent.

There is a lower share of actives among women with immigrant background who are married and have children compared to women without immigrant background in the same marital status. Among those aged 30-39 years, which is the largest group among the married, immigrant women had a share of 69.2 per cent actives, while Norwegian-born women to immigrant parents had 84.8 per cent. Non-immigrant women had a share of 91.3 per cent actives.

The two groups with an immigrant-background had lower average wages. In 2022 Norwegian-born with immigrant parents earned 5.5 per cent less than the majority population, while the immigrants earned 11.2 per cent less. From 2019 to 2022 Norwegian-born to immigrant parents had the strongest increase in the average wages. Thus, the wage gap in relation to the majority has been reduced among them, while the immigrant group on the contrary, experienced a wider gap.

The report is based on register statistics for the 4th quarter of 2022.