Foreign workers increasingly vital to Denmark’s economy

Some 12 percent of Denmark’s GDP in the first half of 2024 was produced thanks to foreign labour.

A new analysis from the Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv) shows that foreign labour contributed to the national GDP by 157 billion kroner in the first half of this year, the equivalent of 12 percent of the economy.

The total is 13 billion kroner higher than in the equivalent period last year.

“It’s hard to underestimate how much [foreign labour] means for Danish businesses at the moment,” senior economist at the Danish Chamber of Commerce, Tore Stramer, told Ritzau.

“I’d go as far as to say that we’d essentially have no employment growth, and we’d have had very low economic growth over the last few years, if it hadn’t been for ongoing supply of foreign labour,” he said.

The contribution of foreigners to Denmark’s economy has been on an almost uninterrupted climb since 2010, the analysis found. In the first half of 2010, the foreign labour contribution to GDP was 57 billion kroner.

Sectors including construction, transport, cleaning are among those with particularly high demand for foreign labour, and the public sector is also a keen employer of international labour.

The pharmaceutical industry can also be added to this list, Stramer said.

“That is the sector which has accelerated employment of foreign labour the most over the last two years,” he said.

“This shows very clearly how important foreign labour is, because the pharmaceutical industry drove growth in the Danish economy in both 2022 and 2023,” he said.

Demand for labour in Denmark has been very high in general in recent years, while the economy and labour market have confounded expert predictions of a downturn.

Statistics Denmark employment figures last month showed over three million people in employment. That compares to 2.6 million people at the beginning of 2010