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Denmark issued 40 percent more non-EU work permits in 2022

Denmark issued over 21,000 work permits to non-EU nationals in 2022, an increase of over 40 percent compared to the previous year.

Published: 27 January 2023 16:14 CET
Denmark issued 40 percent more non-EU work permits in 2022
The number of work permits issued by Denmark was up last year. Photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash

Preliminary figures issued by the Ministry of Immigration and Integration show that the number of work permits issued to non-EU nationals in 2022 was 21,553.

That represents an increase of more than 40 percent compared to 2021, when 15,167 permits were issued.

The number of work permits issued by Denmark has seen steady growth over the last four years, according to ministry figures.

In 2019, some 13,713 work permits were issued to non-EU citizens. The number dropped during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to 10,333 in 2020 before rising significantly in 2021 and 2022.

For work permits issued to EU nationals under the EU’s free movement rules, the numbers tell a similar story. Numbers released by the ministry show 18,578 such permits released in 2019, falling to 15,681 in 2020.

EU nationals were given 22,080 and 25,842 Danish work permits in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

It should be noted the British nationals would be registered under the EU category in 2019 and 2020 and the non-EU category in 2021 and 2022.

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“In a time with low unemployment it’s hugely positive that so many foreigners are choosing Denmark and contributing to our labour market,” Minister for Immigration and Integration Kaare Dybvad Bek said in a statement.

“That’s a huge benefit for Denmark and the Danish economy. We currently need hands in both the public and private sectors and the many people who come here through business [permit] schemes contribute to growth and better service,” he said.

“I am very pleased we are doing well on attracting labour from outside while also having rules that take good care of Danish wage earners,” he said.

Despite the growth in permits and Bek’s positive view of them, businesses have called for more to be done to increase foreign labour and there is also some demand in the opposition.

The Confederation of Danish Industry said in August that Danish businesses are finding it harder than ever to recruit staff and could hire 38,000 new workers immediately if they were available.

The Social Liberals, a centre-left opposition party, in November said it wants Denmark to increase its foreign workforce.

“It is still far too difficult for Denmark’s businesses to bring foreign labour to Denmark. There are trip wires everywhere, and we have a whole catalogue of proposals,” Social Liberal leader Martin Lidegaard said at the time.

In its coalition policy agreement, the government, formed in December, said that it would “relax access to foreign labour for as long as unemployment is low.”

READ ALSO: What do we know about Denmark’s plans to relax work permit rules?

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WORKING IN DENMARK

How will Denmark’s new rules on recording working hours affect you?

From July this year, all people working in Denmark will have to document any deviations from their agreed working hours. Here's how it's going to work.

Published: 13 May 2024 13:13 CEST
Updated: 13 May 2024 15:14 CEST
How will Denmark's new rules on recording working hours affect you?

On January 23rd, Denmark’s parliament voted through a law that, among other things, requires all Danish employers to introduce a working hours registration system that makes it possible to measure the daily working hours of each individual employee. 

The requirement, which comes into force on July 1st, implements a 2019 judgement of the EU Court, which stated that all member states needed to bring in laws requiring employers to record how many hours per week each employee is working.

The bill is built on an agreement reached on June 30th last year between the Confederation of Danish Employers, the Danish Trade Union Confederation, and Denmark’s white collar union, the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations. 

Will everyone working in Denmark now need to keep a detailed record of the hours they put in each day? 

No. Workers will only need to register any deviations from the working hours they have already agreed or been scheduled. So long as they stick to their scheduled hours, they never need to open the app, website, or other time registration system their organisation has set up. 

If they have to come in early for an interview, however, or do a bit of preparation for a meeting the next day in the evening, they will be expected to log those extra hours. 

Similarly, if they pop out for a dentist’s appointment, or to get a haircut, those reductions in working hours should all be noted down. 

What do employers need to do? 

All employers need to set up and maintain a detailed record of the actual hours worked by their employees, but the law gives them a lot of flexibility over how to do this, insisting only that the record be “objective, reliable and accessible”. 

They could do it in the old-fashioned way using a shared Excel spreadsheet, or, as most probably will, use an app such as Timetastic from the UK, ConnectTeam from the US, or Denmark’s zTime or Timelog.

To make it easier for their employees, employers can fill their scheduled hours into the time registration system in advance, so that workers only need to make a log of any deviations.  

Under the law, employers are required to keep these records for five years.

Employees empowered to set their own schedule — so called self-organisers — are exempt from the law, but as the law states that such people should be able to reorganise their own working time “in its entirety” and that this power should be enshrined in their contracts, this is only expected to apply to the most senior tier of executives. 

Who will be able to see my working hours? 

Each employee should only have access to their own data, which is covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and should not be able to see a detailed record of hours worked by their colleagues. 

Managers, however, will have access to the working hours records made by their subordinates. 

Will the legislation put limits on how many hours I can work? 

Yes, but in theory those hours already are limited for almost all employees by collective bargaining agreements. 

The new rule is intended to make sure that employees do not work more than 48 hours per week on average over a period of four months, the minimum standard under EU law, known as the 48-hour rule.

People in certain professions can, however, work longer than the 48-hours if they are covered by a so-called “opt-out”. 

Won’t it just be an additional hassle? 

The Danish Business Authority, the government agency which is supposed to support businesses in Denmark, estimates that keeping the time registration system up to date will only take between one to three minutes of employees’ time. 

In addition, it estimates that as much as 80 percent of employees in the country already keep a record of their time. 

Henrik Baagøe Fredelykke, a union official at Lego, said in an article on the website of the HK union, that he believed that the records could serve as an “eye-opener” about unrecorded overtime. 

What was crucial, he said, was that the system was used primarily to ensure that there was no systemic deviation from working hours and not to police employees. 

“It must not be used for monitoring by the management, who can come and say ‘whoa, why didn’t you work 7.4 hours yesterday?’,” Fredelykke said.

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