Labor Market Perspectives on Resource Development

Economic activities based on non-renewable resources have been an integral part of the involvement of northern communities in the global economy. But the outcome for the North has been very different, depending mainly on the extent to which the communities in reality have been involved in the activity. Three types of relations between the resource exploitation activity and the local communities have been identified. They are connected to the different phases of the resource development with a methodological focus on the labor market development, stressing how local communities may — or may not — be involved in the process, and with the possibility of tracing the degree of involvement by means of the concept of labor market multiplicator. The paper has an offset in the situation in Greenland, but makes comparative references to similar activities in other parts of the circumpolar North.