Danish municipalities are becoming much better at getting refugees into the labour market, according to a new report from the national employers association Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening.
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Twice as many refugees aged 18-59, who arrived in Denmark between 2011 and 2015, found employment in 2016 compared to the previous year.
Among the municipalities successfully able to find employment for refugees is Lejre Municipality in mid-Zealand, which has managed to get over 30 percent into jobs. That’s the third best in the nation behind just Høje-Taastrup and Copenhagen.
Lejre focuses on individual job readiness, and it has established a close co-operation with the business sector as part of finding success.
“It’s meant that we can have a dialogue with them about which job they could do instead of discussing with each refugee about whether they believe themselves that they can work,” Lasse Bjerregaard, a department head at the job centre in Lejre, told DR Nyheder.
“And we have a good co-operation with the local business industry, which has proven vital. Regardless of how much we can motivate the individual, we have nothing to offer without the companies.”
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Women woes
Bjerregaard said the co-operation is functioning to the point where the companies themselves call the municipality to recruit labour among the refugees.
But there is still room for improvement. One of the central problems is the lack of female refugees finding work. Of the 3,316 refugees who found a job in 2016, just 500 were women.
According to the report (here in Danish), other municipalities among the best at finding jobs for refugees were Frederiksberg, Slagelse, Glostrup, Bornholm, Gladsaxe, Middelfart and Hvidovre, which all got over 23 percent of their refugees into jobs.
Nationally, the percentage of refugees in work in 2016 was around 15 percent.
