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RESIDENCY PERMITS

Norwegian work permits: What happens if your qualifications don’t match the job?

Many wishing to move to Norway for work must hold a residence permit for skilled workers. So what happens if your qualifications don't exactly line up with your job offer? 

Published: 26 April 2023 16:35 CEST
Updated: 26 October 2023 14:07 CEST
Pictured is the barcode district of Oslo.
This is what you need to know about the qualification requirements for work permits. Pictured is the barcode district of Oslo. Photo by Gunnar Ridderström on Unsplash

High wages and a good work-life balance make Norway an attractive place to live and work. However, you can’t just up sticks and take the first job offer that comes your way. 

Instead, you will likely need to meet several requirements. These criteria are the loosest for EEA-nationals as they have the freedom of movement across the Schengen Area. 

Those from the EEA simply have to register they are living and working in Norway if they plan on spending more than three months in the country. 

EEA nationals need to have a job and a contract they can present when registering with the authorities. They can hold more than one job and there are no restrictions on qualifications. 

Moving to Norway for work as a non-EEA resident is much more complicated. To get a residence permit based on work, you will usually need to classify as a “skilled worker”, and you will have to pay a hefty application fee of 6,300 kroner.

This means you will need to have completed either higher education, for example, a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or completed at least three years of vocational training at the upper secondary school level. 

However, having an education and a job offer isn’t enough. Your educational background will need to be relevant to your job role. 

If it isn’t, the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI) will turn down your application. This applies even when the UDI has given you permission to start work before your application is fully processed. 

Even if you have previous experience in the role or industry you will be working with, your application will still be rejected if your qualifications don’t align with the job. 

This also applies if you are changing jobs. If you are going to start a new type of position or job role, then you will need to reapply for a work permit. When reapplying for a work permit, you must meet all the requirements again. 

This rules out sudden career changes as your qualifications may not be matched to the direction you wish to take your career in. 

If you are going to move to a new job with a different company and the same position, you will not need to apply for a different residence permit, and you can continue working on the one you have. 

Are there any ways around this? 

In some exceptional cases, applicants can prove that they have gained special skills through “long professional experience”. However, as this is quite vague, it can be hard to say what constitutes special skills or long professional experience. 

If the job you have is in the tourism and hospitality sector, you can apply for a seasonal worker permit. Your employer will be required to illustrate why a Norwegian cannot do the job, such as possessing vital expertise or language skills. However, these permits are only valid for six months, so they are only temporary solutions. 

If you have a Norwegian spouse or partner you have lived with for more than two years, you can apply for a family immigration residence permit. The fee for family immigration is 10,500 kroner for a first-time application, and the Norwegian partner needs to show that they have an income of at least 300,988 kroner per year pre-tax. 

The same applies if your partner isn’t Norwegian but is a residence holder of Norway. 

If your partner is an EEA-national, you can also apply as the family member of an EEA-national, which doesn’t come with much in the way of fees and requirements. 

When moving to Norway as a family member, there are no restrictions on your qualifications – giving you complete career freedom. 

What else do I need to know? 

When applying for a skilled worker permit, there are a number of other requirements to meet. The job offer will need to be for a company based in Norway, and you will need to be offered a contract of 80 percent of full-time hours or more. 

Pay and working conditions must be “normal” for Norway. This means you need to earn as much as the collective agreement for the industry in which you work. If your industry does not have a collective agreement, you need to earn at least 417,900 kroner a year pre-tax for jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree and at least 449,900 kroner per year pre-tax for jobs requiring a master’s degree. 

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For members

WORKING IN NORWAY

Why overqualified foreigners in Norway struggle to find work

Norway is one of the worst countries in Europe when it comes to overqualified foreign labour being stuck in jobs that don’t make the best use of their skills, a new analysis has found. 

Published: 23 April 2024 11:38 CEST
Why overqualified foreigners in Norway struggle to find work

Norway is one of many European countries struggling with “brain waste”, which is where immigrants struggle to find suitable full-time work or are overqualified for their roles due to their education not being recognised. 

The findings are part of an investigation by Lighthouse Reports, the Financial Times, El País and Unbias The News that found that most European countries fail to provide good job opportunities to educated foreigners – potentially at the cost of their labour forces and economies. 

“While the results differ slightly between labour market outcomes, a consistent pattern emerges: immigrants lag behind natives everywhere, but brain waste is worst in Southern Europe, Norway, and Sweden,” the report read. 

Some of the metrics used to measure brain waste were the proportion of foreign residents who were overqualified for their role, underemployed (meaning they weren’t working as much as they could), or unemployed. 

In Norway, 27.6 percent of university-educated Norwegians were overqualified for their roles, according to the report. Meanwhile, just over half of the university-educated immigrant population were overqualified for their job. 

This figure made Norway one of the countries with the largest raw difference in the percentage of the native population being overqualified compared to the immigrant population. 

Furthermore, the number of immigrants who were underemployed, 3.9 percent, was more than double the rate of Norwegians in the same position. 

The investigation used figures from Eurostat between 2017 and 2022. 

Norway’s Directorate of Integration and Diversity has recently investigated the obstacles facing the country’s foreign population in the workplace. 

Its report found that immigrants faced barriers both when trying to progress their careers or simply trying to get their foot in the door. 

Immigrants working in Norway were also more likely to leave working life earlier or lose their jobs. 

READ ALSO: The biggest barriers foreigners in Norway face at work

Factors such as working in temp positions, physically taxing occupations, and industries exposed to economic turbulence contributed to this. 

However, a lack of Norwegian proficiency, a lack of relevant skills and poor health also played a part. 

Discrimination prevented immigrants from entering the workplace and affected those who were employed. 

“More and more people in the population have contact with immigrants in working life, and most experience that contact as mainly positive. At the same time, one in four immigrants has experienced discrimination in the workplace, and this discrimination can occur in different forms and in different working situations,” the report read.

The directorate also said that most companies didn’t have concrete measures to try and promote diversity.

One factor holding back immigrants in Norway was their Norwegian language skills, the report said. 

While Norwegian skills were moving in the right direction, less than half of foreigners in the country had advanced Norwegian language skills (level B2 according to the European framework) after completing language training.

Meanwhile, Lighthouse Reports’ investigation found that brain waste in Norway varied from profession to profession. For example, Norway was one of a number of countries where college-educated immigrants were more likely to be doctors. 

Immigrants with a university education in IT-related subjects were also far less likely to be overqualified. There, the difference between migrants being overqualified compared to natives was just 2 percent. 

However, physical and engineering science technicians, engineering professionals (excluding electrotechnology), and those who have studied education at a university level were the immigrant groups in Norway most likely to be overqualified. 

One thing to note is that immigrants who obtained their qualifications in Norway were far less likely to be overqualified than those who got their degrees outside of Norway, even if they still fared worse than natives overall. 

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