This is how immigrants earn in Norway. Their salaries compared to citizens of the land of fjords

Redakcja

27.10.2025 15:32

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This is how immigrants earn in Norway. Their salaries compared to citizens of the land of fjords

The study is part of a long-standing discussion about the situation of migrants in Norway. stock.adobe.com/licencja standardowa

Immigrants in Norway and other high-income countries earn on average less than people born in those countries. The latest research indicates that the main reason for pay differences is not lower wages for the same job, but rather immigrants’ limited access to better-paid positions. The analysis covered nine countries, including Norway, and allowed for a detailed identification of the sources of income disparities.

In Norway, the wage gap between immigrants and native-born individuals averages 15–20 percent. Although, when comparing people doing the same job for the same employer, the difference drops to about 3–4 percent, labor market segregation plays a decisive role. This means that immigrants are less likely to work in occupations and companies offering higher wages, which significantly affects their economic situation.

Research also shows that children of immigrants in Norway achieve better results in the labor market. The differences compared to their peers from non-immigrant families are already smaller.

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Immigrants have no chance for good positions

The study was based on administrative data covering over 13.5 million workers in nine countries: Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the USA. The researchers used intra-industry, intra-occupation, intra-firm, and intra-job comparisons.

This made it possible to separate the effect of wage differences within the same workplace from the effects of occupational segregation. The results showed that as much as 74 percent of the pay gap is due to the fact that immigrants are more often employed in lower-paid positions.

Immigrants in Norway work, among others, in the construction industry.Photo: Pexels

Is Norway not a paradise for immigrants?

The results for Norway fit into the broader picture of the countries studied, where similar mechanisms are observed regardless of labor market structure and institutions. In Norway and other Scandinavian countries, the wage gap is smaller than in Spain or Canada, where immigrants earn on average 28–29 percent less than native-born people. In Sweden, however, there were no significant wage differences within the same workplace, although overall differences still resulted from occupational segregation.

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Research indicates that in Norway and other developed countries, the key source of the wage gap between immigrants and native-born people is limited access to higher-paying occupations. The wage difference for identical work is much smaller and does not explain most of the disparity.

The results suggest that labor market policies should focus on increasing immigrants’ access to better-paid positions. Currently, their goal is to monitor pay equality within the same workplace.

The study entitled “Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs” was prepared by an international team of scientists led by Are Skeie Hermansen from the University of Oslo. The project involved researchers from, among others, the University of California in Irvine and Berkeley, Stockholm University, Copenhagen Business School, Sciences Po in Paris, University of Groningen, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, and Statistics Canada. The results were published in 2025 in the journal “Nature”.