Mobility among people with a trade or journeyman's certificate

Strengthening the education of tradesmen, defined in this report as a person who has undergone vocational education and training documented with a trade- or journeyman’s certificate, has been a pronounced goal for the current Norwegian government. This commitment has been grounded in the claim that the counties need to educate more tradesmen to cover their own coming needs for qualified labour. This however, raises the question of to which degree tradesmen stay in the county where they undertook their education?

The purpose of the report Mobilitet blant personer med fag-/svennebrev is to present descriptive statistics that give an overview over where tradesmen work after finishing their education. An overview over mobility patterns will contribute to the knowledge base for dimensioning vocational education and training in the different counties. This is done by comparing where the tradesmen were when attaining their trade- or journeyman’s certificate and at the fourth quarter of 2017. The population is limited to tradesmen who were residents in Norway between the age of 19-35 years in 2017. The data is based on numbers from National education database (NUDB) and System for person data (SFP). The report has been compiled on mission from the Norwegian Committee on Skill Needs.

Sør-Trøndelag is the county with the largest share of sedentary tradesmen. 86 percent of those who attained their trade- or journeyman’s certificate in Sør-Trøndelag during the last 5 years were still in that county in 2017. Corresponding shares for those who attained their certificate there more than 10 years ago were 77 percent at the same point in time. Akershus, Oslo, Finnmark and Sør-Trøndelag stand out as counties that receive the most tradesmen from other counties. These counties hade respectively 22, 33, 17 and 8 percent more residing tradesmen in 2017 among those who attained their certificate more than ten years ago, than what they themselves had educated.

As a consistent tendency we find that most tradesmen who leave the county that they took their training in move to one of the other counties in the same region. Thus, the differences in flow of tradesmen become smaller when we compare across regions rather than counties. Østlandet is the region that receives most tradesmen. The region had 7 percent more tradesmen that lived or worked there than was trained and educated in this region. Vestlandet and Nord-Norge is the two regions that gives away more tradesmen than they receive and are left with respectively 4 and 3 percent fewer tradesmen than they educated themselves.

Persons with a background in Natural Sciences, Vocational and Technical subjects constituted 67 per cent of the population covered in the report. Sogn og Fjordane was the county that gave the most tradesmen from this field to other counties. 11 percent less tradesmen with this background worked in Sogn og Fjordane than was educated here. Oslo for their part received the most in this field with 29 percent more that worked in the county than what this county educated themselves.

The report also looks closer at employees with over 50 percent of full-time employment. Women with a background in the field of health, welfare and sport had the highest share of sedentary tradesmen when grouped after vocational field and gender. 89 percent of these were employed in the county they took their education in. When grouped after class of occupation we find that the two most sedentary groups were the group containing farmers and fishermen and the craftsmen. In these groups respectively 82 and 81 percent attained their certificate in their county of employment. When the employees are grouped after industry many of the differences in mobility are lessened. Most industries have a share of sedentary employees between 75 and 80 percent.