Skilled Workers’ Placement on the Danish Labour Market
This report relates the findings of a quantitative study of the spread of skilled workers across occupations that correspond to their vocational qualifications and others where their qualifications are less, or not, relevant (‘remote’ industries). The findings of the quantitative study were used in the selection of qualifications on which to focus in the qualitative study. The findings of the latter are based on company interviews which covered (among other questions) the companies’ motives for employing people with qualifications that were not primarily directed towards the line of business in which the company concerned operated.
Analysis of records reveals a generally high mobility of workers from the trade in which they were qualified to the industry in which they found employment among the relatively recently qualified (the analysis covers skilled workers who qualified in the period 1998–2004). The study also found that it was not possible to identify large concentrations of particular categories of skilled workers in individual industries. It is thus not the case that the skilled workers who are employed in industries other than those for which their qualifications are intended are employed in specific other industries.
The qualitative study is based on a number of interviews with personnel managers, HR department staff and directors in selected companies, focusing on the match between four qualifications (electrician, metalworker, agriculturalist and shop assistant) and four ‘remote’ industries (electrical distribution panel manufacturers, wind turbine manufacturers, building and construction contractors and the postal service). The interviews examine the reasons that caused the selected companies to employ skilled workers qualified in other industries, and what competences they attach importance to when doing so.
The interview study indicates that within the qualifications and industries investigated, it is not an insufficiency of training coverage that causes companies to employ people with qualifications that are not primarily directed towards the line of business in which the enterprise concerned operates. People are taken on either because they possess competences that the company needs, or because skilled workers are employed in unskilled jobs that do not require specific skills.
Conclusion
The findings document a generally high degree of mobility between industries for nearly all the vocational qualifications studied – both into ‘remote’ industries and also between ‘remote’ industries. This mobility between industries and companies is a characteristic of the Danish labour market, and is regarded as an advantage in a situation where the industrial structure is in a state of rapid development and change. In Denmark, up to one in six employees change job in the course of a year, a fact that positions the Danish labour market as one of the most flexible in Europe (Confederation of Danish Industry, 2009).
As regards vocational qualifications, the study indicates that it is generally seen by companies as an advantage that these are broadly based. The company interviews also highlighted the importance of continuing and further education and training as a means of meeting the companies’ training needs, whether these related to updating and upgrading skilled workers’ competences or to more company-specific competences.
The study reveals that some of the skilled workers who are employed in ‘remote’ industries are working as unskilled workers. It is not completely clear whether that is unambiguously good or bad. On the one hand, it can perhaps be seen as a ‘waste of training’ that skilled workers work in jobs where the skills required of them are below the level of their qualification as skilled workers. On the other hand, downwards mobility on the qualification ladder may be a necessary part of the overall labour market mobility that ensures movement of the workforce into the industries and jobs where it is needed – where skilled workers are preferred to unskilled because of their stronger standing in relation to the general competences that are in demand by companies.
The demand for skilled workers in ‘remote’ industries (such as the wind turbine industry and electrical distribution panel manufacturers) then raises the question of whether such industries that welcome ‘remote’ qualifications could have a role to play here through flexible trainee placement agreements involving the participation of a number of companies so as to ensure a satisfactory breadth in young people’s skills.
Danish Institute of Governmental Research | Købmagergade 22 | 1150 København K | E-mail: