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One in ten wage earners in Denmark is a foreign national

The Local Denmark
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One in ten wage earners in Denmark is a foreign national
File photo: Søren Bidstrup/Scanpix 2018

The number of foreign citizens employed in Denmark has increased by 75,000 since 2014, according to figures from Statistics Denmark.

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That means that one in ten people currently earning a living on the Danish labour market was born outside of Denmark, an increase from one in 14 a decade ago, media TV2 reports.

Figures used in the report come from national statistics agency Statistics Denmark (DST).

In 2018, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Germany were the top four contributing countries to Denmark’s foreign-national workforce, according to the figures. Lithuania, Syria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United Kingdom, Iraq and Iran completed the top ten.

All ten countries, as well as Thailand, which was included in a graphic tweeted by DST, have seen an increased number of their citizens working in Denmark over the last five years.

The trend is a positive one for the Danish economy, given that it reflects an increasing need for labour in the country since the end of the last decade, according to Peter Halkjær, head labour market specialist with the Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv).

“Employment has been increasing, and still is. As long as the need for labour continues to increase faster than the available work force is able to keep up, there is no way you can run in to the problem of labour from abroad limiting the chances of finding work for Danish wage earners,” Halkjær told TV2.

A combination of reasons is likely to be behind the steady increase in foreign nationals working in Denmark, Jonas Felbo-Kolding, a labour market researcher at the University of Copenhagen, told the broadcaster.

These include a high demand for labour in several sectors, and increasing overall employment percentages amongst foreign nationals over time.

The Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri), a private interest organisation made up of approximately 10,000 Danish companies within manufacturing, service and trade, has on several occasions stressed the need for Denmark to attract skilled employees from abroad.

READ ALSO: Denmark must be better at selling itself to foreign talents: CEO

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