Several key sectors are facing a critical situation due to labor shortages, and these are the demands of specialists.
Last week, the Danish newspaper Berlingske published a report on the labor market, which is facing numerous challenges in filling vacancies in several sectors. In this regard, Martin Dam, president of the Danish Association of Municipalities (KL), and Jakob Holbæd, director of the Danish Employers' Association (DL), stated that the shortage of educators, waiters, nurses, shopkeepers, social care assistants, and many other employees is so serious that the issue of employment should be the focus of all political negotiations in the next stage, and all new political initiatives should be evaluated based on whether they contribute to providing more hands for the Danish labor market or not: "We propose that politicians make agreements with each other stipulating that all new proposals must be weighed on the labor supply scale.".
Martin Damm and Jacob Holbrad believe that policy proposals that remove workers from the labor market should not be implemented.
Thousands of job vacancies cancelled after recruitment attempts failed
The report highlighted the fact that employers seeking social workers and healthcare workers had to eliminate more than 10,000 job vacancies without filling them during the period from September 2021 to February 2022.
During the same period, there were more than 4,000 unsuccessful attempts to recruit teachers and about 5,000 unsuccessful attempts to recruit nurses for vacancies nationwide, according to figures from the Danish Employment Agency.
According to the Danish news agency Ritzau, Jacob Holbæd indicated that Denmark had an increase in vacancies for a number of years due to political reforms, but this development has stopped. In recent years, Denmark has seen an increase in the recruitment of workers, which was one of the results of the reforms carried out 10-15 years ago with the introduction of raising the retirement age and early retirement. Jacob Holbæd believes that the current and previous governments have contributed very little to increasing the workforce. The task of the Ministry of Finance is supposed to be to evaluate the impact of all policy proposals related to employment, as it is right and reasonable for the ministry to allocate its resources to this situation when there is such a serious shortage of workers, according to Jacob Holbæd.
Martin Dam also pointed to an agreement between the government and the Danish regional administrations to provide 1,000 additional nurses during 2020 and 2021, but the goal was not achieved. In the first quarter of 2022, according to the Danish Health Data Agency, the number of nurses increased by only 194.
