Denmark
Profile written September 2026 · figures updated nightly
Where things stand
The latest published reading for each measure, with the last five years beside it.
01Structure
Denmark is the clearest case on this site of an economy shaped by a single firm. Novo Nordisk's obesity and diabetes drugs have made pharmaceuticals the dominant export industry, and the company's market capitalisation has at times exceeded Danish GDP; its export volumes and profits now move the national accounts enough that forecasters model the Danish economy and the company together.1
Behind that concentration sits a broader industrial base — wind turbines, shipping and logistics, enzymes and food processing, pumps and hearing aids — and industry as a whole is about a fifth of value added, a higher share than in Sweden or the Netherlands.
The dependence cuts both ways, and it is the main structural risk in the Danish figures: a patent expiry, a pricing decision in the United States or a competitor's trial result can move Danish output in a way that has nothing to do with Danish conditions.
02Trade and exposure
Exports are close to seventy per cent of output. Pharmaceuticals lead, followed by machinery, food and the earnings of one of the world's largest container shipping fleets, which are counted as services.
Denmark has run a large current-account surplus for years, and the pharmaceutical boom widened it further. The composition makes the surplus unusually sensitive to American health policy, since the United States is the most profitable market for the products concerned.
03Energy and resources
Denmark imports under two fifths of its energy and generates most of its electricity from wind — around three fifths of the total, the highest share of any country on this site — with solar and biomass covering much of the rest.2
The country was a North Sea oil and gas producer and is now a net importer of gas, having chosen to end new hydrocarbon exploration. What replaced the extraction industry is a manufacturing one: Danish firms design and build a large share of the world's offshore wind capacity, and the planned energy islands are meant to turn surplus power into an export.
04Labour and demography
About eighty per cent of 20- to 64-year-olds are in work and youth unemployment is near eleven per cent. The institution behind those numbers is flexicurity: employers may hire and dismiss with few restrictions, while the state provides comparatively generous unemployment benefits and active help back into work.3
The arrangement moves labour between firms quickly, which is why Danish employment adjusts to shocks through reallocation rather than through long unemployment spells. It is expensive, and it depends on a tax level among the highest in the OECD.
05Public finances
Denmark runs one of the strongest fiscal positions in Europe: a budget surplus of nearly three per cent of GDP in 2025 and public debt under thirty per cent.4 Part of the recent surplus is the corporate tax paid by the pharmaceutical sector, which carries the same concentration risk as the output figures.
The surplus is expected to narrow as defence and public investment rise. Unusually for Europe, that is a choice made from a position of strength rather than a constraint.
06Money and prices
Denmark keeps its own currency and does not use it. The krone has been pegged to the euro — and before that to the D-mark — since the early 1980s, and has been in ERM II since 1999 at a central rate of 7.46038 with a narrow band of ±2.25 per cent.5
The consequence is that Danmarks Nationalbank sets its policy rate to defend the peg rather than to manage the Danish cycle: when the ECB moves, Denmark follows, usually within hours. The rate shown above is therefore a Danish rate in name and a European one in substance — monetary union without a vote.
07What the models expect
These are computed on this site from each series' own history, and are nobody's official projection. The bar is the range the figure lands in half the time; the dot is the central path.
Replayed from past origins on today's revised figures, the same baseline was usually off by 0.59 on consumer price inflation, 1.93 on real gdp, 0.57 on unemployment rate, 0.49 on central bank policy rate, 2.70 on government debt.
08Structural indicators
The figures behind the sections above. They move by a point or two a year, so each carries the year it was measured.
| Measure | Value | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry, share of gross value added | 20.2% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Exports, share of GDP | 69.2% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Energy import dependency | 38.2% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| R&D spending, share of GDP | 3.0% | 2024 | Eurostat |
| Employment rate, ages 20–64 | 79.8% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Youth unemployment rate | 10.8% | Jul 2026 | Eurostat |
| Government balance | +2.9% | 2025 | Eurostat |
| Wind, share of electricity generation | ~60% | 2026 | Low Carbon Power |
| Krone central rate against the euro | 7.46038 | since 1999 | Danmarks Nationalbank |
09Sources and method
Live figures: Eurostat, Bank for International Settlements. Each is fetched nightly and validated before publication; the delivery report on /status/ says how old every one of them is. Profile written 2026-09-12, next review September 2027.
- Novo Nordisk's weight in Danish output and tax receipts — Columbia Economic Review; Bloomberg, September 2026
- The electricity mix — Low Carbon Power, Denmark
- Flexicurity — Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment
- The budget balance — European Commission, forecast for Denmark
- The fixed exchange rate policy and ERM II — Danmarks Nationalbank, exchange rates