67 percent of Norway's foreign-born population are employed. 71 percent of this figure are male, 61 percent are female.

Whilst overall employment figures for Denmark and Sweden are 66 percent and 62 percent, so-called non-ethnic working men and women in these countries account for 71 and 61 percent, and 67 and 57 percent, respectively.

At the same time, the statistics change when it comes to the Scandinavian countries’ immigrant population levels.

Sweden comes in 10th place on the OECD’s scale, with 14 percent of the total population foreign-born, whilst Norway and Denmark are in 19th and 23rd positions - 11 and 8 percent, respectively.

Denmark’s immigration levels for the past five years have been highest – 31 percent – compared with Norway’s 27 percent and Sweden’s 19 percent. The average across OECD countries is 22 percent.

Regarding pay, the average income received by Denmark’s immigrants is 25 percent lower than native-born ones. 26 percent of those persons living in an immigrant household live with income below the poverty line.

Foreign-origin workers in Norway earn 23 percent less than native-born workers on average, and 24 percent live with incomes below the poverty line.

In Sweden, more than 16 percent of immigrants live with incomes below the line of poverty – 2.5 times the corresponding rate for non-immigrants – and earn an average of 83% of that of non-immigrant households.
The OECD country averages for lower pay and poverty line are 21 percent and 17 percent, respectively. 

For all three Scandinavian countries, the OECD writes that, “The foreign-born population is less likely to be employed than their native-born counterparts.”

“This discrepancy is partly driven by differences in age and educational distributions. The gap between the two groups tends to get wider for both men and women after accounting for these differences,” the report states.

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