When assessing applications for work permits under the Pay Limit Scheme, Fast Track Scheme and Positive List, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI), which is responsible for processing work permits, uses income statistics to decide whether a job that has been offered is within the Danish standards for salary.
The statistics, which are provided by the Confederation of Danish Employers (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA) will be updated on October 1st, SIRI said in a statement.
The new income statistics are updated quarterly, with the next update expected to take effect from January 1st, 2027.
If you apply for a residence and work permit after 30 September 2026, your application will be assessed based on the salary statistics for the 2nd quarter of 2026. If you applied between 1 July and 30 September 2026, your application will be assessed based on the salary statistics for the first quarter of 2026.
The exact salary used for assessment depends on your job, with each role given a six-figure DISCO code (which unfortunately has less to do with glittery mirror balls and flares than you might think).
For some jobs, this figure has actually fallen – for example the assessment salary for laboratory worker (code 311110) in the Capital Region in the first quarter of 2026 was 46,437 kroner per month, but in the second quarter of 2026 this fell to 39,007 kroner.
Remember that for some schemes, for example the Pay Limit Scheme, you may need to earn more than the assessment salary to be granted a work permit.
The assessment salary for an industrial engineer (code 214100) also fell over the same period, from 61,806 kroner per month to 43,909.
You can find your own DISCO code on Statistics Denmark's website – remember search your job name in Danish.
Danish work permit rules require salary and other employment conditions offered to the foreign employee to be equivalent to those on the Danish labour market. This applies for first-time applications as well as for extensions.
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For example, the Pay Limit scheme allows work permits to be granted to applicants who have been offered a salary by a Danish employer which is at or above the government-set minimum amount.
The minimum salary for 2026 is 552,000 kroner, or 46,000 kroner per month, but the salary offered may also be higher than this.
However, when assessing applications, SIRI must also assess whether the salary offered is “realistic” for the role being offered, to comply with rules intended to guard against abuse of the work permit system.
According to information provided on SIRI’s website, the agency will normally deem the salary to be within normal Danish standards if the employer, or the employment contract, is covered by a collective bargaining agreement.
In other cases, it may more closely assess the salary that has been offered.
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If SIRI finds that the salary does not appear to be at a usual level for the given role, it may ask the employer about the salary based on DA's statistics.
It may also ask another body, the Regional Labour Market Councils (De Regionale Arbejdsmarkedsråd) for a second opinion.
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