People and Living in Norway

When making research about people and living in Norway, we found that the "International Living" magazine has ranked Norway as number 12 in their Quality of Life Index for 2010, with a total score of 77, where the scores go from 0 - 100 with 100 as best in each categorie.

What takes us down from a top-ranking, is the cost of living, where Norway gets 39 points out of 100.

Freedom, risk and safety scores 100, while infrastructure scores 89. Healt scores 90 of 100, economy is 89, and climate is 60.

This puts Norway to a total score of 77, while countries like Germany has 81 and USA 78.

Read more about Household expences

The majority of the Norwegian population lives and works along the coast, a coastline that is about 83 000 kilometers long, the islands included.

In addition Norway has the 9,000 km coastline of Svalbard.

This makes more than twice the Earth’s equatorial circumference.

People in Norway are living their lives like most other Europeans, maybe with the little difference of knowing the country is economic stabile these times.

How we live

Never has the income from the oil- and gas industry ment more to us, and the Norwegian Government Pension Fund is now filled with NOK 3.200 billions, or $ 551 billions USD.

That puts us in a very special position during these worldwide financial crises.

The unemployment is low, with a total for the whole country of 63.300 persons unemploed. That is only 2,4% of all Norwegian labour force.

People and living is also about houses, and what kind of buildings taht are most common. In fact 8 out of 10 households owns their own home, and 8 out of 10 Norwegians are living in urban areas or villages.

Travelling around in Norway, you will see that, outside the city centers, there are most wooden buildings. Norwegians loves wooden houses, which is an old tradition, in spite of the climate that includes lots of rain and wet. Norwegian houses are relatively big, and in average has every person 50,5 m2 each.

Buying a house or apartment in Norway today, means you will have to pay 3,5% interest to your bank. However, the prices are very high, and it's hard for young people to get into the house-buying market, especially in the larger cities.

An average Norwegian family consists of parents, where both are working, and 1, 2 or 3 children. 4 is also not unusual.

An average Norwegian family is in 2011 using NOK 22.700 on vacation, which is almost twice as much as our Nordic neighbours.

We have 5 weeks of summer holiday, and if you are over 60 years old you even have 6 weeks off. Paid! From all our earnings, we also earn 12% that is set off as our ”vacation money”, which normally is paid out in June each year. That means we have full payment the month we are on vacation.

Traditionally, farming and fishing were the main professions in Norway. That is not the case today. The number of farms is decreasing fast, and the fishery os mostly taken over by huge fishing vessels with factory onboard.

Today, working in the oil/offshore industry is the most lucurative, and best paid.

The number of people working within the officals services, like healt care, is increasing.

Average wages

This is the official, average annual income for some different professions in Norway in 2010. The figures seem to be quite high, making it very popular for other European people to apply for jobs in Norway.(I believe many Norwegian workers are questioning the figures for beeing too high)

Oil- and Gas Industry NOK 668.000 $ 115.000

Financial Services NOK 603.000 $ 103.000

Power / Energy Supply NOK 520.000 $ 89.000

Real Estate NOK 502.000 $ 86.500

Officials employee NOK 450.000 $ 77.500

Industy workers NOK 434.000 $ 74.500

Transport 429 000 $ 74.000

Fishfarm workers NOK 427.000 $ 73.500

Education / teaching NOK 423.000 $ 73.000

Construction workers NOK 416.000 $ 71.500

Hotel-/restaurant workers NOK 313.000 $ 54.000