Greenland needs foreign workers

An ageing population, a slowing economy and steady emigration have left Greenland dependent on foreign labour, at a time when the country is mapping its path to full independence while guarding its resources.

By The Immigrant Times

Fishing and fish processing are the most important sources of income for Greenland. Fisheries alone account for up to 90% of merchandise exports. (Photo Royal Greenland) Looking ahead, the country hopes mining can bring it financial independence, allowing it to eventually cut ties with Denmark. (Photo: Ina Fassbender / AFP)

February 2026: In 2026, Greenland has caught the attention of the world’s superpowers as never before. Its strategic and economic value is assessed by the US, Europe, China, and Russia. Yet a more immediate challenge preoccupies those who govern the island: Greenland is short of people. Fish factories are short of hands. Hospitals struggle to retain staff. Construction sites depend on workers recruited from thousands of miles away. For a territory of fewer than 57,000 people that aspires to independence, the arithmetic of population is not an abstraction; it is a condition of survival.

The Immigrant Times has previously reported on Greenland's geopolitical situation and its relationship with Canada. That article can be read here

An economy reliant on fish

Greenland's economy rests on a narrow base. Fishing and fish processing account for more than 90 per cent of exports and roughly 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Public administration, healthcare and social services together constitute the largest single employer, reflecting both the vast territory to be governed and the scale of state provision in a Danish autonomous territory. Construction, wholesale and retail trade, and transport round out the main sectors. Mining remains limited in practice, though Greenland's reserves of rare earth minerals, uranium, oil and zinc give it considerable long-term potential, a potential that also explains much of the world's sudden interest in the island.

The economy cannot, however, be understood without reference to Denmark's annual block grant, which amounts to roughly 3.5 billion Danish kroner (553 million US dollars) and accounts for approximately 20 per cent of Greenland's total fiscal revenue. This transfer is a central pillar of public finances and a constant reminder of the economic distance between Greenland's current status and the self-sufficiency that independence would require.

After several years of strong growth driven by major infrastructure investment, including new international airports in Nuuk, Ilulissat and Qaqortoq, the economy has entered a slowdown. GDP grew by just 0.8 per cent in 2024 and an estimated 0.2 per cent in 2025, according to Danmarks Nationalbank, Denmark's central bank. The outlook for 2026 is similarly modest, with growth forecast at 0.8 per cent.

The fishing sector, which underpins so much else, is undergoing a significant structural shift. Shrimp, historically the dominant export, is under serious pressure: the biological catch recommendation has fallen from 110,000 tonnes in 2023 to 80,000 tonnes in 2025, as rising cod stocks, which feed on shrimp, have reduced the shrimp population. Cod is compensating to some degree; export values for cod rose by 70 per cent in the first ten months of 2025, on the back of a 48 per cent increase in volumes and stronger prices. But the overall export value of seafood has declined since its peak of 5.5 billion kroner (869 million US dollars) in 2023, and the structural challenge to the shrimp industry looks unlikely to reverse quickly.

Sources: Statistics Greenland; Danmarks Nationalbank, Analysis No. 1, January 2026; Nordregio Rural Labour Shortage Report, 2024.

An ageing, shrinking population

Greenland's population has been broadly stable for a decade, hovering around 56,000 to 57,000. But stability at the headline level conceals worrying underlying trends. The workforce is ageing. The fertility rate has declined to 1.8 children per woman, below the replacement level of 2.1. And emigration, principally to Denmark, with which Greenland shares citizenship within the Kingdom of Denmark, has been a structural feature of Greenlandic life for decades. As of 2020, roughly 16,800 people born in Greenland were living in Denmark, a figure approaching one-third of Greenland's total resident population.

The consequences compound over time. Statistics Greenland projects that, without sustained immigration, the population could fall from around 56,500 today to approximately 46,100 by 2050, a contraction of nearly 20 per cent. The number of children and young people under 16 will fall by a third over that period. More significantly for the economy, the working-age population between 17 and 65 will shrink by 20 per cent, while the number of elderly people will rise substantially. Urbanisation is compounding the effect on smaller communities: almost two-thirds of the population now live in Nuuk or towns with more than 3,000 inhabitants, while less than 7 per cent live in the smallest settlements, half the proportion of 30 years ago.

Sources: Statistics Greenland; Danmarks Nationalbank, Analysis No. 1, January 2026; Financial Times, 2026; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

A labour market short of workers

The labour shortage is not simply a consequence of a tight economy; it is, in the assessment of Danmarks Nationalbank, a structural challenge that will grow more severe over time. Of the 29,200 people employed in Greenland in 2024, approximately nine per cent were Danish citizens born in Denmark, and 4.4 per cent were foreign nationals. The central bank explicitly notes that this is an underestimate of the dependence on foreign labour, as it excludes workers who spend only part of the year in Greenland and therefore do not meet the criteria for permanent residency. The number of registered foreign nationals of working age reached 2,500 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 2,300 the previous year.

Education compounds the demographic problem. Almost half of Greenland's population aged 25 to 64 holds only school-level qualifications as their highest educational attainment, a proportion significantly higher than in OECD or Nordic countries. Those who complete further or higher education have employment rates comparable to the Nordic average; those who do not face the same relatively poor labour-market prospects as school-leavers elsewhere. The result is a labour force participation rate that is lower than Greenland's headline employment figures might suggest.

Looking ahead, the situation is set to worsen, specifically among skilled workers. Current data on the educational behaviour of young Greenlanders shows stagnating qualification levels, meaning that the projected decline in the working-age population will fall disproportionately on those with vocational training, precisely the workers most needed in healthcare, elderly care, construction and education.

Sources: Danmarks Nationalbank, Analysis No. 1, January 2026; Statistics Greenland; Nordregio Rural Labour Shortage Report, 2024.

Sectors with foreign workers

The shortage of unskilled and semi-skilled labour is most acute in fish processing, and it is here that recruitment from abroad has been most systematic. Royal Greenland, the dominant company in the sector, employs approximately 1,390 of the 4,355 people working in fishing across the island. Since 2017, it has recruited workers from overseas to staff its factories along the west coast, where cod and halibut fishing peaks in summer and the need for extra hands is greatest. By 2022, around 280 foreign-recruited employees were working across nine factories in Greenland. Asian workers are now present across the service, construction, and fishing industries.

Healthcare is the other sector where the pressure is most visible and the policy response most active. Greenland has long struggled to recruit and retain medical staff in its more remote communities, relying heavily on short-term workers from Denmark and elsewhere. High turnover places an undue burden on permanent local staff and undermines continuity of care. The challenge will intensify: an ageing population means rising demand for healthcare and elderly care, even as the pool of qualified workers is set to shrink.

Construction has also drawn on foreign labour, driven by infrastructure investment, including new airport projects. With the airport programme nearing completion, construction activity has peaked for now, though major new hydropower and harbour infrastructure projects are in the pipeline and will create fresh demand.

Sources: Royal Greenland A/S; Danmarks Nationalbank, Analysis No. 1, January 2026; Nordregio Rural Labour Shortage Report, 2024; International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 2025.

Relatively high wages attract workers from Asia

The largest and most established group of foreign workers in the fish processing industry has come from China, recruited initially through Royal Greenland's office in Qingdao. The first group of 25 workers arrived in 2017, and word-of-mouth networks have made recruitment self-sustaining ever since, with many subsequent arrivals coming as friends or relatives of those already in place. The wage differential is a significant draw: a Greenlandic factory wage is roughly 1.5 to 2 times higher than its Chinese equivalent, at lower levels of physical intensity.

Filipino workers have followed, and for them, the financial case is even more compelling. The gap between a typical wage in the Philippines and a Greenlandic fish factory salary ranges from 7 to 10 to 1, a differential substantial enough to transform the economic prospects of a worker and their family within a relatively short period of employment.

In broader demographic terms, the transformation has been rapid. The Filipino community in Greenland has grown from around 270 people five years ago to approximately 1,100 today. The Thai community has risen from roughly 200 to around 400 over the same period. Workers from China and Sri Lanka are also present in meaningful numbers. The majority of migrants from outside the Nordic region are men, reinforcing a pre-existing gender imbalance in the Greenlandic population.

Danes and other Nordic citizens, who enjoy free movement to Greenland, continue to provide many of the professional and skilled workers the island depends on, particularly in healthcare, education and public administration.

Sources: Financial Times, 2026; Statistics Greenland; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Royal Greenland A/S.

Working and settling in Greenland

Immigration to Greenland is governed by a layered system that reflects the territory's unusual constitutional status. Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, but immigration policy has not been transferred to Nuuk; it remains a Danish competence, administered by the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI).

Nordic citizens may move and work freely. Non-Nordic EU citizens and all others require both a Danish work and residence permit and, for certain regulated professions, a municipal permit from the relevant Greenlandic municipality. The municipal permit process is deliberately designed to prioritise local labour: companies must first attempt to recruit in Greenland, then seek workers elsewhere on the island, and only then, if unsuccessful, apply for permission to hire from abroad. Municipal permits have recently been extended from a maximum of one year to two, with residence permits aligned accordingly, a change explicitly intended to improve recruitment and reduce administrative friction.

The healthcare sector has received special treatment. Foreign nationals with healthcare qualifications who are already in Greenland on a work permit in another field may now switch into healthcare without resetting the qualifying period for permanent residency, a targeted concession to address acute staff shortages. In November 2025, the Danish agency responsible for attracting skilled workers from overseas opened its first office in Nuuk, a concrete signal that structured international recruitment has become a policy priority rather than an emergency measure.

Sources: Nordic Co-operation / Info Norden; Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI); Financial Times, 2026.

Foreign workers are cautiously welcomed

The arrival of workers from China, the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka in small, close-knit Greenlandic communities is a cultural novelty with no real precedent. The Inuit are not an insular people by accident: their culture evolved over millennia in one of the planet's most demanding environments, shaped by tight communal bonds and a deep attachment to land, sea and language. The presence of significant numbers of workers who neither speak Kalaallisut, the Greenlandic language and a core marker of Inuit identity, nor Danish, the language of administration and wider communication, sits uncomfortably with a society that has spent decades trying to assert its cultural distinctiveness against Danish influence.

Royal Greenland reports that its Chinese and Filipino workers have been welcomed in their communities, participating in social events, visiting colleagues' homes and joining fishing trips with Greenlandic friends. That account may well be accurate in many cases. But formal corporate descriptions of harmony rarely capture the full texture of social relations, and the published research on how Greenlandic communities experience the new arrivals is sparse.

What is documented is a broader historical ambivalence toward outside workers. Earlier waves of Danish professionals, often single men, created demographic imbalances that generated social strain. The current influx is different in character: factory workers rather than administrators, predominantly from Asia rather than Europe, arriving under corporate rather than state arrangements. How Greenlandic communities are navigating this particular novelty remains, for now, underexplored in the academic and journalistic literature.

Sources: Royal Greenland A/S; Nordregio Rural Labour Shortage Report, 2024; ScienceDirect, Cultural Change and Mental Health in Greenland.

Population and economic growth are prerequisites for independence

Greenland's labour shortage is not merely an economic management problem. It sits at the heart of the territory's most consequential political ambition: independence from Denmark. The case for independence rests, among other things, on the ability to sustain a functioning economy and public services without Danish block grants. A shrinking, ageing population that cannot fill its own jobs and hospitals makes the case harder to argue, and the Danish National Bank's January 2026 analysis makes clear that fiscal pressures are already acute, with a structural shortfall in public finances that demographic trends will only widen.

The irony is that the same rare earth and mineral resources that give Greenland its economic case for eventual sovereignty are also what have drawn the aggressive attention of the United States under President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that Washington should acquire Greenland "one way or another." A Greenland weakened by population decline and economic dependency would make the country a more vulnerable target for such pressure.

Greenland has the potential to become the Norway of the 21st century, transforming its vast natural wealth into lasting prosperity. But to get there, it must reconcile its need for foreign workers with a deep-rooted attachment to land, language and a way of life that many Inuit are determined to preserve on their own terms.

Methodology: This article draws on data and reporting from Danmarks Nationalbank, Analysis No. 1 (January 2026); Statistics Greenland; the Financial Times (2025); Royal Greenland A/S; the Nordregio Report on Nordic Rural Labour Shortages (2024); the Nordic Co-operation / Info Norden portal on work and residence permits; the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI); the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs; the International Journal of Circumpolar Health (2025); and ScienceDirect.

Further reading from The Immigrant Times: A Canada–Greenland Partnership ||

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