This report investigates the role of firms in generating skills mobility. Combining Danish firm- and individual-level register data, we explore firms’ use of foreign highly skilled labour in Denmark in two different analyses. We refer to foreign employees working in a job within one of the first three major International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) groups (i.e. managers, professionals, technicians and associate professionals) as expats, and the firms that employ them as expat firms.
The first analysis explores the relationship between skill flows and production. We compare production characteristics for firms recruiting skilled workers from abroad to firms that do not recruit such workers. Moreover, we examine how firms use highly skilled international workers relative to native workers within the firms.