Labour Market


  • Norwegian partnership for an inclusive workplace

    An “intention agreement for an inclusive workplace” was reached between the government and the Norwegian social partners at the beginning of October. Over the next four years, the parties will work actively towards reducing absenteeism by 20 %, getting more disabled people into work and encouraging people to stay working for longer. The agreement will…

    3 minutes
  • Internet pop

    In recent months, several books have been written about the IT industry by former pop musicians.

    3 minutes
  • Denmark: Flexible working arrangements and sheltered employment

    It is better to change the workplace than to force people into early retirement. This is the catch phrase of a reform currently taking place in Denmark. New ways of working have been introduced: flexible working arrangements and sheltered employment.

    2 minutes
  • Iceland’s Director of Labour: At the Service of Working Life

    “Yes, 4x4s are very much status symbols here,” he replies smiling and with a sense of self-mockery. We have just climbed aboard a huge Land Rover and are driving off with a panoramic view into a wet landscape.

    7 minutes
  • Head-hunters to help Longterm Unemployed

    Expert group proposes new models to meet labour market demands: “We believe that improving the function of the labour market and ensuring the availability of labour will be key factors in the next few years. This policy line includes the provision of some additional services for more hard-to-place applicants by ‘head-hunters’,” says Heikki Räisänen, an…

    2 minutes
  • Nordic Council takes up the fight against illegal workers

    The Nordic countries are to set up control systems to fight and expose companies using illegal workers, according to a decision taken by the Nordic Council at its session in Copenhagen.

    1 minute
  • Jørgen Kosmo, Labour Party, Norway

    Bottlenecks in the labour market?  With such an open economy as that in Norway and the dramatic technological developments we are experiencing, we must go in for great adaptability in working life. An education/training system that quickly detects the need for different types of labour force and adapts itself to that need will be a…

    3 minutes
  • The Nordic Ministers of Labour

    The issue of the supply of skilled labour is high on the agenda in the Nordic countries, as well as that of getting everybody on track for the new knowledge-based society. We have put four questions to the Ministers responsible for labour market policy in the Nordic countries, in order to hear their views on…

    1 minute
  • The hunt for skills

    A central feature of developments is the hunt for skilled personnel. Developments are taking place so fast that it is necessary for people to constantly upgrade their knowledge. For instance, it is estimated that there will be three generations of technology during a graduate engineering course. The various countries are now going in for skills…

    3 minutes
  • Electronic jobs service attracts new visitors

    In 1999, the Norwegian jobs website had 47 million hits. This was more than a quadrupling in terms of the previous year. In Sweden too, there is a great amount of interest in its jobs website, Platsbanken. On any day, 100,000 persons visit the site and read 600,000 adverts for jobs. The Swedish system will…

    2 minutes