Employment Offices — Nordic Labour Journal

The Swedish football club using sports against unemployment and for inclusion

(Sep 19, 2024) The challenge for sports clubs is to attract those who have not yet become engaged, especially those who need support on their journey toward a healthier life and who want to become more involved in society. It’s about more than just building muscles.

Employment specialist helped Norwegian Julia (17) find her dream job

(Feb 29, 2024) Close cooperation between two public authorities in Norway is giving young people with mental health challenges a new chance in the classroom or in the labour market. Employment specialist Anne Tvedt helped Julia Engan Pettersen find her dream job.

Nordic researchers want political action on NEETs

(Feb 29, 2024) More and more young people in the Nordics are not in education or employment. Not enough is done to help young people facing extra challenges, argue Nordic researchers.

New ways of recruiting skilled labour

(Oct 28, 2022) 2023 has been designated the European Year of Skills by the EU Commission. Skills are about more than simply having knowledge, it is about having the ability to use them to carry out tasks and solve problems.

Why Finnish nurses choose Norway over their native country

(Oct 28, 2022) In the largest hall at the Messukeskus conference centre, Finnish DJ Darude springs a surprise tune. Sandstorm blasts out to an enthusiastic audience made up of nearly 2,000 nurses from the whole of Finland during the annual nurses' days in Helsinki.

Is foreign recruitment unethical?

(Oct 28, 2022) Is it ethical to recruit staff from countries which also have labour shortages, for instance, the Philippines? It is not a sustainable alternative, especially when the most qualified are the ones who are the most likely to leave.

Vulnerable young people – how best to find them jobs and a place in society?

(Sep 22, 2022) What is needed to help vulnerable young people be included in work, education and society? A new report sums up the situation in the Nordics. Here is a spoiler: There is no ”quick fix”.

Fast track for refugees took opposite directions in Sweden and Norway

(Apr 25, 2022) “Fast track was imported from Sweden, but came to Norway to die!” That is the subtitle of a chapter in a new book about how Norway’s welfare agency NAV has worked with inclusive workplaces, learning and innovation.

Swedish Employment Service wins award for anti-violence work

(Feb 12, 2022) Over the past four years, the Swedish Public Employment Service has worked to increase awareness around violence in close relationships, which is often a hidden cause of long-term unemployment. They have trained 6,000 staff as well as suppliers and clients. Now they have been awarded the 2022 Swedish Gender Equality Award.

Magdalena Nour: Raze barriers against international talent

(Dec 10, 2020) Sweden lacks doctors, nurses, teachers and IT engineers, yet foreign-born job seekers struggle to access the Swedish labour market. If they make it as far as an interview, the experience often makes them feel surprise and frustration.

Who pays for Corona in the end?

(May 15, 2020) We all benefit from measures to prevent transmission, but the economic consequences are not equally divided. The contamination risk must therefore be measured against the economic consequences, now that the Nordic countries are entering a phase of reopening their societies.

A testing time for Director of Denmark's labour market agency

(May 15, 2020) As the top boss for the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment STAR, Maria Schack Vindum has been busy after Corona suspended large parts of the country’s employment policy, created mounting unemployment and cleared the way for new solutions.

Pandemic stresses already pushed Swedish employment service

(May 15, 2020) As a result of the Corona pandemic, unemployed people are streaming to the Swedish Public Employment Service. This is putting pressure on an already strained organisation, which has cut 3,500 jobs since the spring of 2019.

A Norwegian NAV course seen through Latin American eyes

(May 15, 2020) I remember the day the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, (NAV), sent me that letter answering about a non-economic help I have applied weeks before, I needed to speak with a counsellor. I said I was a journalist and that I wished to find a job which would match fields of my competence, so I wanted to speak with someone.

Norwegian pilot project: get work-ready in the workplace

(Mar 04, 2020) Nordic employment authorities usually use one of two approaches when trying to help people far removed from the labour market. The traditional one is to make the job seeker “job ready” before starting work. The other is to train people for the labour market in an actual workplace.

Record low unemployment in the Faroe Islands – just 296 people

(Feb 27, 2020) Nowhere in the Nordics will you find a higher employment rate than in the Faroe Islands right now. It stands at 90%, and unemployment is only 0.9%. What is it like in a society where nearly everyone has a job, and where being unemployed is correspondingly difficult?

How Norway got EU benefit regulations wrong for seven years

(Dec 16, 2019) What lies behind Norway’s scandalous miscarriage of justice that led to 2,400 people being branded benefit cheats because the state misinterpreted the EEA agreement? And how could this have gone on for seven years?

Maria Mindhammar takes helm at Sweden's battered PES

(Dec 12, 2019) On 5 December Maria Mindhammar was appointed the new Director-General of the Swedish Public Employment Service. It is a job she gladly goes to, while also calling the situation at the Public Employment Service “exceptionally challenging”.

Eva Nordmark's task: to liberalise Sweden’s employment act and reform the employment service

(Oct 18, 2019) When former TCO President Eva Nordmark accepted to replace Ylva Johansson as Sweden’s Minister for Employment, she also accepted to follow up on proposals she had been critical of in the past, like the liberalisation of the employment act.

Severe cuts to the Swedish Public Employment Service

(Feb 15, 2019) What does the labour market look like for unemployed employment service workers? The question is suddenly relevant for a lot of staff at the Swedish Public Employment Service. 4,500 of them were given their notice on the 30th of January this year.