Denmark needs foreign workers to help address labour shortages in many sectors, and a key part of this is holding onto the labour it brings in. But is Denmark retaining fewer foreign workers than it has in the past? How does Denmark compare to other countries?
There’s no doubt that it makes more sense to keep highly-skilled foreign workers coming to Denmark in the country, rather than having to keep recruiting new employees internationally to make up for those who choose to move elsewhere.
National data do not appear to suggest that Denmark is seeing declining retention rates for foreign arrivals, or that the number of foreigners leaving the country is starting to overtake the number arriving.
A look at immigration data from Statistics Denmark shows that while, the number of people leaving Denmark has increased over the past three years, this has been more than matched by a corresponding increase in arrivals.
Net migration is largely on trend, following a slump in the pandemic and a post-pandemic rebound.
This has long been the historic pattern for Denmark.
According to Befolkningens udvikling, or Population Trends, a 2023 study by Statistics Denmark, well over half of the foreign citizens who have come to live in Denmark since 2003 have since left, with the majority moving on within three years.
In general, the “retention rate” in the context of immigration refers to the proportion of immigrants who choose to stay in a country over a given period, rather than leaving or returning to their country of origin. It is often used to assess how well a country retains international students, workers, or other migrants after their initial stay.
It should be noted that the Danish data used in this article do not account for the reasons for each individual’s immigration into Denmark (asylum, work, study, family reunification and so on), nor do they record why people left.
The three-year retention rate for Denmark – the percentage of foreigners still living in Denmark three years after they arrived – has largely hovered between 40 percent and 50 percent throughout the past 20 years.
The rate did fall for a few years after peaking at 51.4 percent in 2015 – perhaps as a result of immigration, work-permit and citizenship rules being tightened in the wake of the refugee crisis.
But the 2020 figure, the most recent year from which a three-year retention rate can be calculated, suggests that the share of arrivals choosing to stay in the country is now back on the increase.
