Nearly One in Ten Employed in Norway Is a Job Immigrant, SSB Says

Statistics Norway's 2025 figures show where job immigrants work and where they live. The shares are high in business services and construction, and low in most of the rest of the economy.

On 4 September 2026 Statistics Norway (SSB) published an analysis of employment among job immigrants (“jobbinnvandrere”). According to SSB, they make up “rett under én av ti” (just under one in ten) of the employed in Norway. The figures cover the fourth quarter of 2025.

Business services, share of employed who are job immigrants: 26%

Akershus and Rogaland (highest counties), share of employed: 11%

New EU countries since 2004, share of job immigrants, 2021: 63%

New EU countries since 2004, share of job immigrants, 2025: 59%

Asian nationals, share of job immigrants, 2021: 5%

Asian nationals, share of job immigrants, 2025: 7%

Selected shares from SSB; the first two bars are shares of all employed, the rest are shares of job immigrants. Bar length is scaled to 40 per cent for the first two and 100 per cent for the others, so compare bars only within each group. Source: SSB, 4 September 2026.

The short version: Job immigrants are a large group in some industries, and most come from EU countries that joined after 2004. The Asian share is small but rose from 5 to 7 per cent between 2021 and 2025, according to SSB.

What SSB reports

Industries: in business services 26 per cent of the employed are job immigrants; construction has almost the same share and the most job immigrants by number.
Newcomers: in hotels and restaurants, 39 per cent of resident labour immigrants had lived in Norway for under four years, the highest share of recent arrivals among industries SSB names.
Places: Akershus and Rogaland have the highest county share, 11 per cent; the municipality of Sande is highest at 39 per cent. Troms has the highest share of recent arrivals among counties, 33 per cent against an average of 21 per cent.

Read the definition before the headline

SSB's “job immigrants” combine two groups: non-resident commuters, who work in Norway without being formally resident (Nordic citizens commuting from Sweden count here), and labour immigrants, who are registered residents and gave work as their reason for immigrating. Employment means paid work of at least one hour in the reference week in November. The article's own numbers for the totals are in a chart we could not read, so we give none.

What it means for jobseekers abroad

The industries with high shares are not a list of open jobs, and the figures say nothing about permits. Citizens of the EU/EEA can work without a permit but should register if they stay; see registering as an EU/EEA citizen. Others need a residence permit, as explained in work and residence permits: an overview. For hotel and restaurant work and the permit rules around it, see hotel and cleaning jobs for non-EU citizens.

Sources

Flere sysselsatte arbeidsinnvandrere etter pandemien (SSB): published 4 September 2026, reference year 2025 (fourth quarter); read 7 November 2026.

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