🇩🇰 Denmark

Denmark is a modest net receiving country — not Germany-scale, but it imports skilled labour to staff its pharma and engineering sectors while its own fertility hovers near 1.7. The 32.8% old-age dependency ratio is manageable today but climbing, and the rising youth unemployment trend (9.1% → 11.9%) despite a tight labour market narrative suggests the entry-level cognitive tier is already hollowing out. The 'flexicurity miracle' works until the job you retrain into didn't exist last quarter.

Denmark has launched a national AI strategy focused on ethical deployment and public-sector adoption, with earmarked funds for digital skills and SME digitization. The flexicurity model theoretically enables rapid reskilling via unemployment insurance tied to active labour market policies. In practice, retraining vouchers for displaced pharmacists and Maersk clerks do not magically create the demand-side job absorption they imply.