60% of New Danish Municipal Employees of Immigrant Background

This is unbelievable news in a time of recession:

Danish municipalities are employing immigrants by the thousands. 60% of the new 7,300 new employees last year are of immigrant background.

In 2007 there were 32,543 municipal employees of a different ethnic background, but after one year this increased to 37,058.

And the increase is remarkably. In just one year, municipalities employed more than 4,500 more immigrants, which comes to an increase of 14%, reports Danish newspaper Politiken, based on a survey by the National Association of Municipalities newsletter, Momentum.

Michael Ziegler, mayor of Høje-Taastrup, says that the municipalities focused in the past few years on attracting immigrants, and those efforts now bore fruit. Now they're trying to keep those new employees, by utilizing their abilities and helping them in areas where they aren't as strong, such as language difficulties.

Job market researcher Christian Albrekt Larsen of Aalborg University told Politiken that particularly in the recent years when there was a lot of competition it was difficult to find new people. This presumably got the municipalities to look for employees among the immigrants.

Source: Avisen (Danish)

Hat tip: Islam in Europe.