The Danish government has agreed some changes to the Pay Limit Scheme. This is a type of residency permit for non-EU workers where the salary (including some benefits like holiday pay), must reach an annual salary threshold. There are four of these schemes: the original, supplemental, fast-track and fast-track supplemental.
The supplemental Pay Limit Schemes require lower annual salaries where there are documented shortages of workers, and an attempt by the employer to recruit in Denmark first.
Now, there are 16 lucky countries where you can come in under this scheme when your salary meets an even lower threshold.
These countries are:-
Albania, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Singapore, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States of America.
They are not:-
Afghanistan, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Philippines, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Syria, Thailand and Turkey.
Why did I mention those in particular? They are the ones I happen to have data on from the jobindsats.dk website by STAR (Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment).
In the first quarter of this year, there were about 3000 workers from that “unwanted” group on these kinds of permits.
3000 people who are paid more than 415 000 DKK a year.
In contrast, there were about 10 000 from the “wanted” countries (half of these from India), and 6000-ish where the data is not disambiguated so who knows.
(2024 had a big jump because they brought in the supplementary scheme with the lower pay limit the year before. 2025 is lower because it is just the first quarter and maybe peak season hasn’t happened yet)
The Pay Limit for the desired foreigners will be 300 000 DKK instead. So, we will get more workers in lower paid jobs but not from countries like Nepal (which I noted in a previous post is like winning the motherfucking lottery if they want to come here), or Syria (which I noted in a previous post are nationals who are already integral to the safe running of the health service and other key sectors).
No reasoning for why Singapore makes the cut but not Thailand or Phillippines has been offered. Why India but not Pakistan? When Trump did his whole number about “shithole countries” in 2018, it was a diplomatic incident. When Denmark subtweets entire nations in this way, it’s “wow! Denmark wants more foreign labour!”2.
Does it though? Who from Japan, say, is going to jump at the chance at 25 k before tax (including benefits)?
Meanwhile, the government continue to do most of fuck all about actually getting spouses into work, so if they bring families, they won’t stay very long3. The government will continue to make Permanent Residency harder to attain4, so they are ‘welcome’ but with caveats. If they get laid off, it’s straight back to Canada with them.
One thing that I have been wondering about recently around the nightmare of Danish recruitment practices (and I am well aware this is an issue in other countries), is that some companies have got a dating app mentality about their next hire. They have all these “matches” when they set up their job ad, and so they feel like they are well in demand and can afford to be a little picky. So, they don’t want women in their 20s or 30s because babies, they don’t want new graduates, very early career or career changers because inexperience, they don’t want the disabled because sick leave, they don’t want mid and senior career because expensive… the list goes on.
They preferably want a guy in his late 20s to max early 40s, who has 3-5 years experience and no declared medical issues. When they run out of that pool of applicants locally, they run off to job fairs in Spain to get their supply of unicorns.
But they can’t quite persuade them to make their lives here, so it’s a never-ending cycle of countries like Denmark5 hoovering up all the juiciest morsels from the international labour market. To mix metaphors for a second, it reminds me of the Simpsons Escalator to Nowhere. This is not sustainable.
Anyway. Let’s keep an eye on it. My prediction is that either a lot of people from the “no thank you” countries will find dual citizenship and other style workarounds and we will apparently need some other sticking plaster solution to block them (why?) or it just won’t be used that much after all, like all the other work permit schemes.
That’s right, I made a graph in Excel. I still can, you will be pleased to know.
And so the Overton window moves.
If they don’t bring families, they won’t stay long either but that’s another story
This is a category to watch by the way, this is huge proportion of which internationals work in Denmark and grows by more than 5 thousand every year
It’s really not just Denmark. But it ALSO Denmark