Minister aims to update rules to boost youth employment

Danish Employment Minister Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen plans to overhaul outdated labor regulations that hinder youth from taking part-time jobs. The government criticizes the current rules as excessive and hard to comprehend, which can deter children and adolescents between 13 to 17 years from seeking employment. Minister Halsboe-Jørgensen emphasizes the importance of work safety but believes the current constraints are too restrictive. The current regulations, unchanged since the 1990s, have arbitrary restrictions, like 13-year-olds being allowed to shelf books in libraries but not in bookstores or supermarkets. There are also rules preventing 15-year-olds from operating espresso machines if they are still in primary education, though their peers not in school can. The government will propose new, contemporary labor safety guidelines based on the consideration that approximately half of the 13-17-year-olds currently have part-time jobs, a decline from 255,000 in 1988 to 180,000 in 2022.