New wage statistics will be used from October 1st for assessment of work permit applications by Danish authorities, with the lower quartile of salaries used in assessments rising by an average of 13 percent from the previous wage statistics which applied from June 2024. 

When assessing applications for work permits under programmes including the Pay Limit Scheme, the Fast Track Scheme and the Positive List, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), which is responsible for processing work permits, uses income statistics to decide whether a job that has been offered is within the Danish standards for salary.

The statistics, which are provided by the Confederation of Danish Employers (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA) will be updated on October 1st, SIRI said in a statement earlier this week.

The new income statistics contains information from second quarter of 2024. SIRI expects quarterly updates to the income statistics in future, with the next update to take effect from January 1st, 2025, it said in the statement.

If you apply for a residence and work permit after 30 September 2024, your application will be assessed based on the salary statistics for the 2nd quarter of 2024. If you applied between 1 July and 30 September 2024, your application will be assessed based on the salary statistics for the first quarter of 2024.

Danish work permit rules require salary and other employment conditions offered to the foreign employee to be equivalent to those on the Danish labour market. This applies for first-time applications as well as for extensions.

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For example, the Pay Limit scheme allows work permits to be granted to applicants who have been offered a salary by a Danish employer which is at or above the government-set minimum amount.

The minimum salary was reduced from 448,000 kroner per year to 375,000 kroner per year in a rule change in 2023, but the salary offered may also be higher than this.

However, when assessing applications, SIRI must also assess whether the salary offered is “realistic” for the role being offered, to comply with rules intended to guard against abuse of the work permit system.

According to information provided on SIRI’s website, the agency will normally deem the salary to be within normal Danish standards if the employer, or the employment contract, is covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

In other cases, it may more closely assess the salary that has been offered.

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If SIRI finds that the salary does not appear to be at a usual level for the given role, it may ask the employer about the salary based on DA's statistics.

It may also ask another body, the Regional Labour Market Councils (De Regionale Arbejdsmarkedsråd) for a second opinion.