PUBLISHED May 28, 2026
Growth That Is Changing Shape
According to “Konjunkturrapporten 2026 — Status og forventninger for økonomisk utvikling i industrien”, published by Norsk Industri — Norway’s industrial federation — the country’s manufacturing sector delivered strong results in 2025. Industrial production rose by more than four percent in the first eleven months of the year compared with 2024. Revenue across the sector grew by approximately eight percent in nominal terms over the same period. Value added in industry increased by 5.1 percent in the first three quarters of 2025 — a rate of growth that represents a significant acceleration from the stagnation of 2022 and 2023.
But these headline figures mask a structural recomposition that is arguably more significant than the aggregate numbers. The growth of 2025 was concentrated in shipbuilding, oil refining, chemical industry, data and electronics production, and metal goods and machinery manufacturing. The petroleum supply industry, which had been running at historically high capacity utilization since 2021, saw that pressure beginning to ease as the outlook for petroleum investment shifted downward. For 2026, the federation’s member survey projects the first significant contraction in offshore supply chain activity — a turning point that has been long anticipated but is now arriving.
The Oil Transition: A Structural Shift, Not a Cyclical Dip
The single most structurally important development documented in Norsk Industri’s 2026 report is the expected decline in activity among Norway’s petroleum supply industry. Companies in this segment have experienced years of strong growth — production is currently at historically high levels — but the federation is clear that the trajectory is turning. Lower petroleum investment from 2026 onward is causing multiple companies in the sector to plan workforce reductions. The offshore supply chain, which has been one of the most powerful engines of Norwegian industrial employment and revenue, is entering a period of managed contraction.
This transition is not a crisis in the conventional sense — it has been anticipated and planned for. But it is real, and its scale is significant. Capacity utilization in the petroleum supply segment has been persistently very high since 2021; the easing of that pressure will free up both labour and capital, but will also leave gaps in activity that other sectors will need to fill. The federation’s report is candid about the displacement effects — workers with specialized offshore skills will need retraining or redeployment, and the industrial regions most dependent on petroleum supply activity will face adjustment challenges.
Where Growth Is Actually Happening: Defence, Renewables, and Technology
If the declining sector is offshore supply, the rising sectors are unmistakable. Defence manufacturing and its supply chains stand out as the clearest growth story in the Norsk Industri survey. Companies across the defence industrial base — from platform manufacturers to component suppliers — are reporting production increases, rising investment, and growing employment. The federation expects this momentum to continue and strengthen in 2026. The backdrop is Norway’s commitment to significant increases in defence spending as part of its NATO obligations, combined with a broader European rearmament drive that is generating new procurement contracts for Norwegian manufacturers.
Alongside defence, the supply chains serving renewable energy production and energy systems — including grid infrastructure — are expanding. Norway’s industrial base has developed genuine expertise in offshore technology that is now being redeployed toward offshore wind, where Norwegian engineering and maritime competencies translate naturally. Export data supports this picture: engineering products, machinery, and technology equipment saw export growth of nearly ten percent in 2025, with energy sector equipment — particularly offshore wind technology — contributing significantly.
Electronics, data processing equipment, and precision machinery round out the list of growing sectors. Together, these segments represent a Norwegian industrial economy that is becoming more technologically intensive and less commodities-dependent — a transition that the country’s industrial policy has sought for years and that appears to be materializing in the data.
Norway’s industrial exports (excluding food) reached 348 billion kroner in the first three quarters of 2025 — a real increase of 4.1 percent compared with the same period in 2024. The largest export categories were engineering products (machinery, equipment, technology, electronics, and transport equipment), metals, and chemical and mineral products. Engineering products led the growth, with nearly ten percent expansion.
The federation’s member survey projects continued export growth in 2026, with more companies expecting increases than decreases. Crucially, this positive outlook holds even in the context of increased trade barriers — including US tariffs — that represent a significant headwind for globally exposed Norwegian manufacturers. The report acknowledges that Norwegian industrial exports to the US specifically are experiencing disruption and adaptation as a result of higher tariff barriers, but concludes that the aggregate effect on total Norwegian industrial exports is manageable, with diversification of destination markets providing partial offset.
The continuing uncertainty around market access to the EU — Norway’s dominant export destination through its EEA membership — is flagged as a separate concern. Any deterioration in the regulatory or trading relationship with the EU would have immediate and substantial consequences for Norwegian industry in a way that US tariff changes, however significant individually, would not.
Norway’s industrial exports (excluding food) reached 348 billion kroner in the first three quarters of 2025 — a real increase of 4.1 percent compared with the same period in 2024. The largest export categories were engineering products (machinery, equipment, technology, electronics, and transport equipment), metals, and chemical and mineral products. Engineering products led the growth, with nearly ten percent expansion.
The federation’s member survey projects continued export growth in 2026, with more companies expecting increases than decreases. Crucially, this positive outlook holds even in the context of increased trade barriers — including US tariffs — that represent a significant headwind for globally exposed Norwegian manufacturers. The report acknowledges that Norwegian industrial exports to the US specifically are experiencing disruption and adaptation as a result of higher tariff barriers, but concludes that the aggregate effect on total Norwegian industrial exports is manageable, with diversification of destination markets providing partial offset.
The continuing uncertainty around market access to the EU — Norway’s dominant export destination through its EEA membership — is flagged as a separate concern. Any deterioration in the regulatory or trading relationship with the EU would have immediate and substantial consequences for Norwegian industry in a way that US tariff changes, however significant individually, would not.
Investment in Norwegian industry (excluding food manufacturing) fell by nearly two percent in the first three quarters of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Looking ahead, the signals for 2026 are mixed but lean negative: Norges Bank’s regional network survey projects marginal growth of around 0.5 percent, while Statistics Norway’s investment survey points to a decline, particularly in oil refining, chemical industry, and metals.
The barriers to investment documented in the Norsk Industri survey have evolved over time. Unpredictable regulatory conditions have been consistently cited since 2022 as a major obstacle — a persistent signal of business frustration with policy uncertainty. Toward the end of 2025, however, falling revenue and order intake displaced regulatory uncertainty as the most-cited barrier to expansion, reflecting the direct impact of softening demand. High input prices remain a persistent constraint, and more than ten percent of industrial firms now report that the cost of capital goods is limiting investment — double the pre-2020 rate, a direct legacy of the inflation surge of 2021–22.
One of the most analytically striking passages in the Norsk Industri report concerns the Norwegian industrial labour market — where two apparently contradictory dynamics are occurring simultaneously. On one hand, vacancy levels in industry have remained at persistently high levels, with approximately 4,900 unfilled positions as of the end of the third quarter of 2025. On the other hand, an increasing share of member companies are planning workforce reductions in 2026 — through natural attrition, dismissals, and temporary layoffs — largely driven by the expected decline in offshore supply activity.
The coexistence of these trends reflects a skills mismatch of considerable structural depth. Norwegian industry needs mechanics, welders, subsea engineers, automation specialists, and software engineers with industry-specific qualifications. The workers being released by the contracting offshore supply sector have some of those skills — but not all of them, and not in the right concentrations for the defence and renewable energy sectors that are growing. The education and training system, the report notes, is not producing candidates fast enough or in sufficient numbers with the specialised competencies that expanding industries require.
The report also documents a specific workforce availability concern: reduced access to foreign labour, driven by a weak Norwegian krone and tightening regulatory conditions, is making it harder to fill competency gaps through immigration — a channel that Norwegian industry has relied upon for skilled roles in recent years.
Against this complex industrial backdrop, NHO — Norway’s main business federation — projects mainland GDP growth of 1.8 percent in 2026. That figure reflects an economy that is growing at a decent pace by European standards, supported by healthy household consumption and a public sector that is actively expanding defence and infrastructure spending.
For Norwegian industry specifically, the 2026 picture is one of divergence and transition rather than uniform expansion or contraction. The sectors that are growing — defence, renewable energy, technology, advanced machinery — are doing so with genuine momentum and genuine structural underpinning. The sectors that are contracting — petroleum supply, parts of metals, construction-linked industries — are doing so for reasons that are unlikely to reverse quickly.
The Norwegian industrial economy is, in other words, in the process of becoming something rather different from what it has been. The transition is further along than the headline aggregates suggest, and faster than the policy frameworks designed to manage it anticipated. Whether the education system, the labour market institutions, and the regional economies most affected by the offshore contraction can keep pace with that transition is the central unanswered question in Norway’s economic outlook for 2026 and beyond.
Investment in Norwegian industry (excluding food manufacturing) fell by nearly two percent in the first three quarters of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Looking ahead, the signals for 2026 are mixed but lean negative: Norges Bank’s regional network survey projects marginal growth of around 0.5 percent, while Statistics Norway’s investment survey points to a decline, particularly in oil refining, chemical industry, and metals.
The barriers to investment documented in the Norsk Industri survey have evolved over time. Unpredictable regulatory conditions have been consistently cited since 2022 as a major obstacle — a persistent signal of business frustration with policy uncertainty. Toward the end of 2025, however, falling revenue and order intake displaced regulatory uncertainty as the most-cited barrier to expansion, reflecting the direct impact of softening demand. High input prices remain a persistent constraint, and more than ten percent of industrial firms now report that the cost of capital goods is limiting investment — double the pre-2020 rate, a direct legacy of the inflation surge of 2021–22.
One of the most analytically striking passages in the Norsk Industri report concerns the Norwegian industrial labour market — where two apparently contradictory dynamics are occurring simultaneously. On one hand, vacancy levels in industry have remained at persistently high levels, with approximately 4,900 unfilled positions as of the end of the third quarter of 2025. On the other hand, an increasing share of member companies are planning workforce reductions in 2026 — through natural attrition, dismissals, and temporary layoffs — largely driven by the expected decline in offshore supply activity.
The coexistence of these trends reflects a skills mismatch of considerable structural depth. Norwegian industry needs mechanics, welders, subsea engineers, automation specialists, and software engineers with industry-specific qualifications. The workers being released by the contracting offshore supply sector have some of those skills — but not all of them, and not in the right concentrations for the defence and renewable energy sectors that are growing. The education and training system, the report notes, is not producing candidates fast enough or in sufficient numbers with the specialised competencies that expanding industries require.
The report also documents a specific workforce availability concern: reduced access to foreign labour, driven by a weak Norwegian krone and tightening regulatory conditions, is making it harder to fill competency gaps through immigration — a channel that Norwegian industry has relied upon for skilled roles in recent years.
Against this complex industrial backdrop, NHO — Norway’s main business federation — projects mainland GDP growth of 1.8 percent in 2026. That figure reflects an economy that is growing at a decent pace by European standards, supported by healthy household consumption and a public sector that is actively expanding defence and infrastructure spending.
For Norwegian industry specifically, the 2026 picture is one of divergence and transition rather than uniform expansion or contraction. The sectors that are growing — defence, renewable energy, technology, advanced machinery — are doing so with genuine momentum and genuine structural underpinning. The sectors that are contracting — petroleum supply, parts of metals, construction-linked industries — are doing so for reasons that are unlikely to reverse quickly.
The Norwegian industrial economy is, in other words, in the process of becoming something rather different from what it has been. The transition is further along than the headline aggregates suggest, and faster than the policy frameworks designed to manage it anticipated. Whether the education system, the labour market institutions, and the regional economies most affected by the offshore contraction can keep pace with that transition is the central unanswered question in Norway’s economic outlook for 2026 and beyond.
