OSLO: Norway’s economic recession has led to high unemployment rates among foreign workers and according to SSB a record number of them opted to leave the country last year.
Some 3,500 Poles left Norway while emigration was also high among migrant workers from Sweden, Lithuania and Germany. The overall number of foreign workers who packed up and left Norway is higher than ever recorded by SSB.
“Within the construction indusry, a large proportion of the employees come from abroad. It is hard for them to find new jobs because the market is very difficult,” Torben Sneve, the CEO of staffing company Adecco, said.
At the beginning of the year, 45 percent of Adecco’s employees were foreigners. Today that figure is down to 27 percent.
Sneve said that Hordaland, Rogaland and Southern Norway have been hit the hardest. In Hordaland alone, the market shrunk by 17 percent last year, he said.
