New research has concluded that foreign nationals in Denmark earn 9.2 percent less than Danes, largely due to limited access to better-paid industries.
The conclusion is part of an international study published in British journal Nature and has also been detailed in a press release from Copenhagen Business School.
The study analysed data from 13.5 million employees and employers across nine countries, including Denmark as well as Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United States.
On average, immigrants across the nine countries earned 17.9 percent less than native-born workers.
The analysis showed that the majority of the wage gap is due to immigrants being concentrated in low-paying sectors and companies. The remaining difference, around 4.6 percent, is due to lower pay for the same work, the researchers concluded.
With its wage disparity of 9.2 percent between foreign nationals and Danes, Denmark performs better than average but still has a wage gap.
“Immigrants have significantly less access to high-paying sectors and companies. That is the main reason for the wage gap,” Lasse Folke Henriksen, a professor at CBS and co-author of the study, said in the press release.
READ ALSO: ‘Automatic bias’: How having a foreign name in Denmark affects life
The study shows that inequality across the nine countries varies significantly depending on region of origin. Immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa experience the largest wage gap at 26.1 percent, while people from Europe, North America and other Western countries face a smaller gap of 9 percent when working as foreign nationals in the countries in question.
Advertisement
In six countries in the study, including Denmark, data was available for “second-generation immigrants” – people whose parents are immigrants but were born in the country they immigrated to.
This allowed researchers to examine whether wage patterns persist across generations. Findings showed that the gap is reduced to an average of 5.7 percent but that it remains particularly pronounced for children of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.
Henriksen said the study underlines the importance of understanding the mechanisms behind wage disparities between Danes and people with foreign backgrounds.
“We have a welfare society built on the ideal of equal opportunity, but our study clearly shows that structural barriers prevent immigrants and their children from accessing large parts of the labour market,” he said in the press release.
Although employment among immigrants and their children in Denmark is relatively high and trending upwards, wage differences are evidence that barriers to the best-paid positions still exist, according to the professor.
The CBS expert called for integration policy to focus on removing these barriers through measures including upskilling, language training, job search support, recognition of foreign qualifications, and efforts to combat discrimination in hiring and promotion.