Fewer unemployed immigrants

Registered unemployment among first-generation immigrants was 6.2 per cent at the end of November last year, compared to eight per cent the year before. In comparison, unemployment in the entire population declined from 2.5 to 2.1 per cent during the same period. Unemployment among non-Western immigrants as a percentage of economically active persons dropped the most in Vest-Agder, by 3.5 percentage points.

At the end of November last year, 7,342 unemployed first-generation immigrants were registered, 1,383 fewer than during the same quarter in 1997. This is a decline of 1.8 percentage points in the number of unemployed as a percentage of the workforce. In comparison, unemployment in the entire population declined by 0.4 percentage point.

East European immigrants saw the greatest decrease in unemployment, with 3.5 percentage points, while immigrants from the Third World saw a decline of about 2.8 percentage points.

While the number of unemployed non-Western immigrants as a percentage of the workforce was 9.2 per cent in November 1998, only 2.4 per cent of Western immigrants were unemployed.

Fewer in job creation programmes

The number of immigrants covered by ordinary government measures to promote employment plummeted by 2,343 persons from November 1997 to 1998. Immigrants nevertheless make up 30 per cent of all people involved in ordinary public sector job creation programmes.

New statistics
Unemployment among immigrants, 4th quarter 1998.
The statistics are published four times a year in the Weekly Bulletin of Statistics. For more information contact: Jorn.Ivar.Hamre@ssb.no, tel. +47 21 09 49 29 or Kari.Kraakenes@ssb.no, tel. +47 21 09 47 86.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 7, 1999