Oslo Outlook

Labour market tightness: Labour market tightness measures the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed individuals on a quarterly basis. A lower level of labour market tightness suggests that the supply of labour exceeds the demand for workers.

After a period of above trend levels of market tightness, the labour market tightness has fallen and stabilised around a level of approximately 0.5 for in the third and fourth quarters of 2024. The measure indicates that the labour market is cooling down, both compared to the national average and to its long run trend (See national data, available from Statistics Norway, tables: 05110 and 11587.).

The change in the indicator has been driven primarily due to an increase in the number of registered unemployed persons, coupled with a small decline in the number of job vacancies (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

The labour force: The workforce in Oslo has been steadily increasing since 2021 and continued to grow into 2024 (Figure 4). In the fourth quarter of 2024, there was a net change of 0.5 percent compared to the third quarter, which is in line with the long run quarterly growth rate of 0.55 percent.

Nominal median earnings: While the region experienced a steady increase in median earnings from 2016 through to 2024 (Figure 5), wage pressures have dissipated as competition for labour has moderated through the year Q1 2024 to Q4 2024, resulting in only a negligible change over the calendar year.

Business confidence: The measure, taken from Norges Bank surveys expectations from businesses in the region, and normalises the responses on a [-3,3] scale where 0.0 represents the economy being at trend performance (Figure 6). The observations indicate that business confidence in Oslo is stable, fluctuating with minor changes around the “normal” level. Over the year there has been a slight improvement in sentiment, from slightly pessimistic (-0.3) to slightly optimistic (0.1).

Business dynamics: In 2024, the percentage increase of newly established businesses was slightly lower than in the previous five years but remains above the 15-year average (Figure 7). Between the first and second quarters of 2024, the indicator stabilised, before resuming growth in the third quarter in 2024. While the number of newly established businesses in 2024 is somewhat lower compared to the period between 2020 and 2023, the fourth quarter saw a slight increase in the number of new businesses compared to the third quarter. However, the fourth quarter also experienced a slight rise in the number of bankruptcies (Figure 8).

Rounds of Venture Capital financing: Venture capital financing rounds in the Oslo region showed stable growth until 2018, after which they became more volatile, peaking in 2022 (Figure 9). Since then, there has been a gradual decline throughout 2023 and into each quarter of 2024. The size of the VC rounds has shown the same trend, with a growth until 2018 and a peak in 2021. Since then, the total amount of venture capital invested in Oslo have been steadily decreasing together with the number of rounds. Preliminary figures shows that the among of venture capital invested has reached an all-time low in the first quarter of 2025.

When comparing the number of venture capital rounds in Oslo to other Nordic capital regions, data from recent quarters (2021–2023) shows that Oslo and Stockholm have conducted the highest number of VC rounds (Figure 10). However, in the fourth quarter of 2024, Helsinki surpassed Oslo, recording more VC rounds than the Norwegian capital. While Oslo has conducted more rounds than Copenhagen and Helsinki over the past two years, the amount of venture capital funds raised has consistently been lower than in Stockholm, and fluctuating between higher and lower than Copenhagen and Helsinki (Figure 11).

Net migration: Oslo has experienced consistent positive net migration throughout the entire period of available data (Q1 2014 – Q4 2024), primarily driven by international immigration (Figure 12). The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are evident in 2020 and 2021, resulting in modest—yet still positive—average quarterly growth in aggregate net migration. However, in 2021, domestic emigration exceeded domestic immigration, leading to a net outflow from Oslo to the rest of the country.

The year 2022 marked the greatest positive population influx to the region, likely driven by both a post-pandemic rebound and a sharp increase in international migration following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In 2023 and 2024, international immigration gradually declined from its 2022 peak, while domestic immigration from other parts of Norway remained at a higher level than during the preceding decade.

Tourism: The number of overnight stays in the region has gradually increased each quarter based on available data (Figure 13). However, a shortcoming of the statistic is that data was only collected from 2020 onwards, so a trend analysis prior to the reopening following the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions is not possible. Examining the data from 2022 till the end of 2024 at a quarterly frequency we observe that demand is broadly stable, with quarters 1 and 4 being periods of low demand and quarters 2 and 3 having high demand. Overall, there was a 6 percent increase in demand in each quarter in 2024 relative to the same quarter in 2023.

House price-to-income ratio: The house price-to-income ratio is defined as the median house price divided by average gross annual income. In the Oslo region, the indicator shows that purchasing a median priced home requires 6-8 years’ worth of gross salaries. However, this has decreased from a peak in 2022. Examining the drivers of the price changes, we observe that from 2016 to 2022, there was a strong growth in housing prices which outpaced the growth in earnings. Since 2022, housing prices have stabilised somewhat while the nominal average wage earnings have risen, leading to the gradual decline in the ratio (Figure 14).

Disposable income after consumption: When examining disposable income after purchasing a standard household consumption basket, we observe a gradual increase in purchasing power from 2016 to 2024, with a strong period of growth in disposable incomes in 2023 (Figure 15). However, between Q1 2024 and Q3 2024, the rate of inflation has outpaced the growth in nominal earnings, resulting in a decline in disposable income and economic welfare. In the last quarter, we again observe a modest return to the positive trend, though the measure has still not recovered to a peak value observed in 2024Q1.