Cross-border labour market mobility between the Nordic countries
In this section, we will look into some of the data on labour market mobility between the Nordic countries, that is, both migration and commuting to a job in another Nordic country on a daily or weekly basis. We will also respond to the first research question: What parts of the Nordic Region have the greatest cross-border labour market mobility?
Nordic labour market migration
Traditionally, migration is understood as the permanent relocation of both residence and activity space (Getis et al. 2008). In 2020, 458,000 Nordic inhabitants lived in a different Nordic country than the one in which they were born, corresponding to 1.7 % of the population of 27.2 million.
According to the latest statistics, approximately 40,000 people move to another Nordic country every year (Nordisk statistikdatabas, 2020). People in the Nordic Region move more often than other Europeans, 13–16 % of the Nordic population do this every year, which is comparable to other highly mobile societies such as the United States, Canada and Australia (Heleniak, 2020). However, substantially fewer choose to move to another Nordic country.
The composition of the groups of other Nordic inhabitants in the different Nordic countries reveals an interesting but perhaps unsurprising pattern related to proximity, shared languages and territorial history. Of the working-age population working in another Nordic country than the one in which they were born, we find that the majority of those working in Finland are from Sweden, a large majority of Danes in Greenland and Faroe Islands and a mix of Swedes and Finns in Åland. In Norway and Iceland, the patterns are more mixed, and Denmark has the most mixed group of working-age population from other Nordic countries.
Figure 1. Foreign-born, working-age population (15-64 years old) by country of birth. Source: Lundgren & Wøien Meijer (2022), p 88-89.
However, a more detailed map reveals differences in this general pattern in individual regions and municipalities. For example, there are more Danes in south Sweden and south Norway and more Norwegians in the Swedish municipalities bordering Norway.
Nordic labour market commuting
Nordic labour market mobility involves not only migration but also commuting to a job in another Nordic country on a daily or weekly basis. Due to the lack of data from the statistical offices, the latest data on Nordic labour market commuting patterns is for 2015–2018. In this period approximately 49,000 people worked in another Nordic country, corresponding to 0.5 % of the working-age population.
The figures for Nordic commuting are less impressive than the corresponding European average of 1% and the higher figures in several European cross-border regions such as those in Slovakia, Belgium, and Estonia (Eurostat, 2016, Lundgren & Wøien Meijer, 2022). Again, the differences are large between individual regions and municipalities. The highest numbers of commuters in 2015–2018 were in south and mid-Sweden and Åland, with over 1% of the total workforce (Lundgren & Wøien Meijer, 2022).
More recent data from Region Skåne in Sweden shows that approximately 18,000 people commute in the Öresund area, 16,000 from Sweden to Denmark and 2,000 in the other direction (Region Skåne, 2022). Like the number of migrants, the number of commuters may play an important role in individual municipalities. The lack of statistics on cross-border mobility is problematic for policymakers at various levels. For example, in the Swedish municipality Årjäng bordering to Norway, counting cross-border commuters raised the employment level by 15 percentage points (Lundgren & Wøien Meijer, 2022).
Many people commute in the Öresund area. Photo: Drahomír Posteby-Mach