Skilled Workers’ Placement on the Danish Labour Market

This report investigates the extent to which skilled workers are spread across occupations that correspond to their vocational qualifications and others where their qualifications are less, or not, relevant (‘remote’ industries). Taking selected qualifications and industries, the study examined companies’ motives for employing people with vocational qualifications that were not primarily directed towards the line of business in which the company concerned operated.

It was found that holders of vocational qualifications had a high degree of mobility from the trade in which they had qualified to the industry in which they found employment. This mobility leads to a very broad spreading of skilled workers across industries. 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 company 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.