The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV, originally an abbreviation of ''Nye arbeids- og velferdsetaten'') is the current Norwegian

public welfare Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specificall ...

agency, which consists of the state

Labour and Welfare Service The Labour and Welfare Service (Norwegian: ''Arbeids- og velferdsetaten'') is a government agency of Norway. Together with municipal welfare agencies, it makes up the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). The Labour and Welfare Servic ...

as well as municipal welfare agencies. It is responsible for a third of the

state budget of Norway The State budget of Norway ( no, Statsbudsjettet) is a government budget passed by the Norwegian legislature, Stortinget, each year. It accumulates all income and expenses for the Government of Norway. The document defines the taxes to be colle ...

, administering programs such as

unemployment benefits Unemployment benefits, also called unemployment insurance, unemployment payment, unemployment compensation, or simply unemployment, are payments made by authorized bodies to unemployment, unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are fun ...

pension A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

child benefit Child benefit or children's allowance is a social security payment which is distributed to the parents or guardians of children, teenagers and in some cases, young adults. A number of countries operate different versions of the program. In most co ...

s and more. The agency has 19,000 employees (14,000 in the state service). Its head is the

Labour and Welfare Director The Labour and Welfare Director (Norwegian: ''Arbeids- og velferdsdirektør'') is an office (''embete'') in Norway, created in 2006. The Labour and Welfare Director is the head of the Labour and Welfare Service The Labour and Welfare Service (Norwe ...

, currently

Hans Christian Holte Hans Christian Holte (born 11 March 1965) is a Norwegian civil servant. Having graduated as cand.polit. in political science from the University of Oslo in 1992, he became head of department in the Norwegian Directorate for Health and Social Af ...

, who is appointed by the government.

History

NAV was established as a result of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Act of 2006. The newly established agency is a collaboration between the

Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service The Labour and Welfare Service (Norwegian: ''Arbeids- og velferdsetaten'') is a government agency of Norway. Together with municipal welfare agencies, it makes up the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV). The Labour and Welfare Service ...

( no, Arbeids- og velferdsetaten) and certain parts of the municipal social services. "NAV" was originally an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for "New Labour and Welfare Administration" ( no, Ny arbeids- og velferdsforvalting) but is now seen as a word. The aim of the NAV reform is to gather all the social security and employment offices to a common state agency where the employees of the Labour and Welfare Service and the municipal social services would work together to find solutions for unemployed people. The reform was adopted by the

Parliament of Norway The Storting ( no, Stortinget ) (lit. the Great Thing) is the supreme legislature of Norway, established in 1814 by the Constitution of Norway. It is located in Oslo. The unicameral parliament has 169 members and is elected every four years bas ...

in the spring of 2005, and the social security agency

National Insurance Service The National Insurance Service ( no, Trygdeetaten) was a Norwegian government agency responsible for social security. Organization It had its roots in the National Insurance Administration ( no, Rikstrygdeverket), which was founded by parliament ...

and employment agency

Aetat Aetat (short for no, Arbeidsmarkedsetaten) was a Norway, Norwegian etat, government agency responsible for battling unemployment. History It had its roots in the Directorate of Labour ( no, Arbeidsdirektoratet), which was founded in 1945. Its pu ...

was formally dismantled in July 2006 as the new Labour and Welfare Agency was established.

The agency's name as a verb

Media have reported the existence of the verb "''nave''", which can be defined as a person taking a one-year holiday from one's (process of acquisition of) formal education, while expecting that the agency will pay for the holiday.Confessions of a ''trygdesnylter''. I have been a client of NAV for 3 years, but it is not a lack of ambition—on the contrary—that prevents me from starting my professional career, writes the author of the article.
/ref> The word was named

Word of the year The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year. The Ge ...

in Norway in 2012 by the

Language Council of Norway The Language Council of Norway ( no, Språkrådet, ) is the consultative body of the Norwegian state on language issues. It was established in 2005 and replaced the Norwegian Language Council (, ) which existed from 1974 to 2005. It is a subsidiar ...

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Government agencies of Norway Government agencies established in 2006