Guest Lecture by Assistant Director of NAV Hordaland
On Tuesday October 25th, The Assistant Director of NAV Hordaland, Tommy Johansen, gave a presentation for students in the course SAMPOL216 ‘Labour market policies in comparative perspective’.
Main content
A major question for the road ahead, according to Tommy Johansen, is how we can maintain the good welfare system in the future, when the population is ageing so that more people are entitled to old-age pensions but less working-age people are paying into the system.
Health paradox
There is a strong public focus on the unemployed, but the proportion of people on sick leave is much larger, especially when also considering recipients of work assessment allowance and disability benefits. Johansen noted this as a paradox, when taking into account that the health of Norwegians has never been better.
Hordaland's labour market
Tommy Johansen started his presentation by talking about the Nordic model and the role of NAV in the Norwegian welfare state. He then looked at the Norwegian labour market compared to other European countries, before discussing more specifically labour market trends in Hordaland and recent challenges such as the crisis in the oil sector. Interestingly, the number of employed in Hordaland has increased at the same time as the number of unemployed, which has to do with labour immigration.
First-hand experience
Tommy Johansen was invited to give a presentation by Associate Professor in Comparative Politics and SAMPOL216 course coordinator, Georg Picot. His presentation provided the students with first-hand experiences about the work and challenges of labour market administration.
