A significant majority of private sector employees, nearly 75%, work for firms that are affiliated with an employer organization. This indicates a high level of participation in such organizations, which play an important role in shaping labor market policies and representing the interests of employers.
In comparison to other Nordic countries, Norway has a higher employer organization density rate than Denmark and Finland, but a lower rate than Sweden. Notably, the density rate in Norway has been on the rise over the past two decades, increasing by about 8 percentage points since 2000. This increase is in contrast to the trend in other countries like Denmark and Germany where the density rate has been on the decline, while in Sweden is also has been increased over the same period.
As of the end of 2022, approximately 66,500 firms were affiliated with an employer organization in Norway. These affiliated firms employed a total of approximately 1.94 million individuals, an increase of 130 000 since 2018.
NHO is the largest employer organisation
Among the employer organizations, the NHO (The Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise) stands out as the largest organization, both measured in terms of the number of firms and the number of employees in the affiliated firms. Note that from 1 January 2023, Finans Norge (Finance Norway) is part of NHO.
About the data
Data on trade unions and employer organisations are from Statistics Norway “Trade union members and strikes“.
International data are from the OECD/AIAS ICTWSS database.