The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (Norwegian: Arbeids- og velferdsforvaltningen, NAV) is the current Norwegian public welfare agency.
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 (Norwegian: Arbeids- og velferdsetaten) and certain parts of the municipal social services.[1] "NAV" was originally an acronym for "New Labour and Welfare Administration" (Norwegian: 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 and employment agency Aetat was formally dismantled in July 2006 as the new Labour and Welfare Agency was established.[2] The aim is that each municipality in Norway would have a local NAV office until the end of 2010.