Published 16. October 2026
To understand where Norway's labor market is heading, I tracked job postings recorded in the Lightcast database between 2021 and 2025, which systematically scraped and parsed daily data from over 60.000 websites across many countries. While not all jobs are posted on the recruitment channels, analyzing real-time online postings provides a unique and immediate view of how hiring demand is evolving.
The findings show that while overall job creation is recovering, the nature of work, the geographical distribution of new jobs, and the demand for skill sets have undergone fundamental transformations.
A rebound but with structural changes
First, full-time hiring has experienced a recovery alongside changing work arrangements. Between 2021 and 2024, online postings for full-time jobs dropped by nearly 30%, falling from over 584,000 to under 398,000. However, 2025 brought a strong comeback, with listings surging back to over 520,000.
Yet, this recovery looks very different across employment categories. Despite representing a smaller proportion in the database, pure part-time job listings expanded continuously throughout the five-year period, expanding by more than 100% from 1,138 in 2021 to 2,632 in 2025. Meanwhile, the remote work boom has stalled. Postings offering fully remote or hybrid arrangements peaked in 2023 at 4,826 and have since declined to 4,058. Today, employers seem to increasingly rely on part-time flexibility while dialing back on remote work options.
Major differences across regions
Second, hiring momentum has shifted away from major cities, creating a stark geographical split. While national figures show strong growth, job listings in major economic hubs like Oslo and Bergen merely stabilized at lower levels rather than bouncing back.
In Oslo, annual postings plummeted from over 134,000 in 2021 to around 64,000 in 2025. In contrast, non-metropolitan areas and regional centers saw continuous expansion, growing from 140,000 listings in 2023 to over 188,000 in 2025.
The divergence may stem from several structural drivers, including weakening real estate and construction sectors, rapid growth in regional resource-intensive industries, and shifting living costs in major cities. Regardless, this spatial heterogeneity could explain why recent university graduates in major cities still find the job market very tough, despite the recovery in 2025.
Considerable differences across professions
Third, demographic shifts and technological developments are pulling different professions in opposite directions. Healthcare vacancies surged dramatically, rising from roughly 43,800 in 2023 to nearly 69,100 in 2025 as an aging population drives strong demand for medical personnel.
Conversely, technology roles experienced a sharp downturn. Job postings in Information Technology and Computer Science fell from over 52,500 in 2021 to 31,200 in 2024, showing only a minor pickup to 36,800 in 2025. Rather than triggering a hiring boom for IT workers, rapid artificial intelligence integration seems to exert a replacement effect on routine tasks (e.g., programming), reducing overall IT headcount demand.