About The Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment

The Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment (STAR) prepares and implements political initiatives and reforms, and supports achievement of the goals of these reforms through efficient management. Moreover, STAR generates and disseminates knowledge to support the Minister for Employment and efficient employment efforts. STAR plays a crucial role in the implementation of reforms and employment policies by supporting municipalities and unemployment insurance funds.  The latter are responsible for the direct implementation of reforms and policies.

The goal of STAR is to contribute to moving as many people as possible from unemployment into employment or education and to ensure that enterprises have access to the labour they need. The primary function of STAR is to support this goal, and to this end, STAR has four core tasks: Citizen and Business Services, Implementation and Supervision, Policy Making, and Knowledge and Dissemination.

STAR has developed a strategy to support the core tasks of the organization and to address the challenges and opportunities of the future labour market. STAR’s strategy for the period 2018 to 2021 can be read on the link below.

STAR’s strategy 2018-2021 (pdf) (new window)

Citizen and business services

STAR works via its three regional divisions to support cohesive business efforts, for example in connection with larger recruitment tasks. STAR also assists enterprises with international recruitment via the organisation Workindenmark. STAR also administers and makes decisions regarding the Holiday Act and regulations on EEA unemployment insurance benefits.

For this reason, STAR is in regular contact with citizens and enterprises in connection with case processing and supervision. The goal of this is to ensure timely and correct case processing in accordance with the applicable regulations and political agreements.

Implementation and supervision

STAR ensures implementation of employment policy in dialogue with relevant stakeholders in the sector, including in particular job centres and unemployment insurance funds, enterprises and the regional labour market councils. Implementation is carried out on the basis of acts, regulations, financial incentives, digital and practical solutions as well as dialogue-oriented activities. In the implementation process, STAR is responsible for the legislative work associated with implementing employment policy and social security policy.

STAR develops and maintains digital solutions that support the implementation of reforms in the employment sector. STAR provides the public, enterprises, job centres and unemployment insurance funds with information, data and self-service solutions.

STAR sees to it that the goals of employment policy and social security policy are realised, and ensures correct management of funds granted for employment efforts and social security schemes. The goal of this is to ensure effective implementation of initiatives by municipalities, job centres, unemployment insurance funds etc. in accordance with applicable regulations, the Minister's wishes as well as current political agreements and goals.

Read more about implementation on the link below.

Implementation in the Danish employment system

Policy-making

STAR supports the development of policies and the preparation of political initiatives, agreements and reforms in the employment sector and the social security sector. STAR does this by presenting and elaborating on models and proposals for how to achieve the greatest possible impact. The focus is on individuals, enterprises and proposals that are easy to administer by, and comprehensible to job centres and unemployment insurance funds, municipalities as well as by individuals and enterprises. The goal is to support agreements, reforms and regulations with technical input.

Knowledge and dissemination

STAR generates and disseminates new knowledge about the labour market, employment initiatives and social security initiatives for the benefit of political stakeholders and society at large. This is done by among other things conducting reviews, projects, statistical analyses based on extracts from databases, pools for targeted initiatives, evaluations as well as controlled trials. The work of generating and disseminating knowledge supports STAR's work in the other three core task areas.

The goal is to provide a knowledge base about how to effectively strengthen the decision-making basis of the Minister and the Danish Parliament (the Folketing) as well as to support the intended impacts of agreements, reforms, regulations and implementation initiatives.

Read more about STAR's approach to evidence-based policy-making on the link below.

Evidence-based policy-making