The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV, originally an abbreviation of ''Nye arbeids- og velferdsetaten'') is the current Norwegian

public welfare Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance p ...

agency, which consists of the state Labour and Welfare Service as well as municipal welfare agencies. It is responsible for a third of the

state budget of Norway The State budget of Norway () is a government budget passed by the Norwegian legislature, Stortinget, each year. It accumulates all income and expenses for the Government of Norway. The document defines the taxes to be collected, and what expense ...

, administering programs such as

unemployment benefits Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work d ...

, sickness benefits,

pension A pension (; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be either a " defined benefit plan", wh ...

child benefit Child benefit or children's allowance is a social security payment which is distributed to the parents or guardians of children, teenagers and in some cases, young adult (psychology), young adults. Countries operate different versions of the benefi ...

s, qualification programme, temporary accommodation, health services, and more. In 2022 the agency had approximately 22,000 employees including approximately 15,500 employed by the state, and approximately 6,500 employed by the municipalities. Its head is the Labour and Welfare Director, currently Hans Christian Holte, who is appointed by the government.

History

NAV was established as a result of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Act of 2006. The newly established agency is a collaboration between the

Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service The Labour and Welfare Service (Norwegian: ''Arbeids- og velferdsetaten'') is a government agency of Norway. Together with municipal welfare agencies, it makes up the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). The Labour and Welfare Service ...

() and certain parts of the municipal social services. "NAV" was originally an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for "New Labour and Welfare Administration" () but is now seen as a word of its own. The aim of the NAV reform is to gather all the social security and employment offices to a common state agency where the employees of the Labour and Welfare Service and the municipal social services would work together to find solutions for unemployed people. The reform was adopted by the

Parliament of Norway The Storting ( ; ) is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years based on party-list proportional represe ...

in the spring of 2005, and the social security agency

National Insurance Service The National Insurance Service () was a Norwegian government agency responsible for social security. Organization It had its roots in the National Insurance Administration (), which was founded by parliamentary act on 23 July 1894 under the name ...

and employment agency Aetat was formally dismantled in July 2006 as the new Labour and Welfare Agency was established.

Unemployment benefits

Norway has an unemployment rate of 2.9% in 2022, one of the lowest in Europe, only below Czech Republic with 2.3% and Poland with 2.6 percent. The duration of the unemployment benefit from NAV depends on person's income for the last 36 months. Depending on the income, the unemployment benefit period can be up to 104 weeks (income above 237,240 NOK) or up to 52 weeks. Unemployment benefit is paid every 14 days. The maximum unemployment benefit you can get is 62.4% of your past income up to 711,720 NOK. It is slightly above the average value for OECD countries with the lowest benefits of 39% in Greece, and highest benefits of 94% in Denmark. A person can apply for unemployment benefit from NAV if he lost over 50% of the total working hours, lost his income, had an income of over 177,930 NOK in the last 12 months or over 355,860 NOK in the last 36 months, and under the age of 67.

The agency's name as a verb

Media have reported the existence of the verb "''nave''", which can be defined as a person taking a one-year holiday from one's (process of acquisition of) formal education, while expecting that the agency will pay for the holiday.Confessions of a ''trygdesnylter''. I have been a client of NAV for 3 years, but it is not a lack of ambition—on the contrary—that prevents me from starting my professional career, writes the author of the article.
/ref> The word was named Word of the year in Norway in 2012 by the

Language Council of Norway The Language Council of Norway (, ) is the administrative body of the Norwegian state on language issues. It regulates the two written forms of the Norwegian language: Bokmål and Nynorsk. It was established in 2005 and replaced the Norwegian Lan ...

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Labour and Welfare Administration Government agencies established in 2006 2006 establishments in Norway