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 specifical ...

agency, which consists of the state Labour and Welfare Service as well as municipal welfare agencies. It is responsible for a third of the state budget of Norway, 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 unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are funded by a comp ...

, pensions,

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 adult (psychology), young adults. A number of countries operate different versions o ...

s and more. The agency has 19,000 employees (14,000 in the state service). Its head is the Labour and Welfare Director, currently Hans Christian Holte, 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 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 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 The public sphere (german: Ö ...

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