Paid workforce
The 2007 Report by Chaves Ávila and Monzón Campos highlights that approximately 6% of the total paid employment (aged 16-65) in Denmark works in the non-profit sector. Figures split up for cooperatives, mutual societies and associations are the following:
– co-operatives: 39,107 employees
– mutual societies: 1,000 employees
– associations and foundations: 120,657 employees,
for a total of 160,764 paid employees (2002-2003 data).
According to Liveng (in Defourny and Pestoff eds., 2008), this high percentage of paid work in the third sector is caused by the high number of independent organizations in the welfare area, where nearly 67% of the worked carried out is paid, and the 48% of the total expenses is represented by salary payments.
Volunteer workforce
According to the 2007 Report by Chaves Ávila and Monzón Campos of the CIRIEC for the EESC, Danish FTE volunteers amount to 67,300 units, 33% of the adult population (1999-2001 data).
This result is confirmed in a more recent report entitled The Danish volunteer survey (2006), which shows that one third of Danes engage in voluntary work (source: http://english.ism.dk/social-issues/civil-society/Sider/Start.aspx).
According to Anne Liveng (in Defourny and Pestoff eds.,2008), the so-called “voluntariness research” (2006) – a third sector mapping project – pointed out that in 2004 unpaid work amounted to 110,041 FTE employees.
Generally speaking, people having a high level of education and social and economic capital are more likely to volunteer (except for the social and health issue area, where their engagement is approximately the same).
Comparing these figures with the ones from the past, the percentage of people engaged in volunteering is has markedly increased: it was one quarter of the whole Danish population in 1993; it reached one quarter in 2004.
In the last years, the number of members and participants in organisations and independent institutions has grown as well.
Also, there is a hidden volunteering potential, in particular amongst young people: approximately one third of the people interviewed said they are not currently involved in third sector activities, but they would like to become volunteer.
Relatively speaking, the most active group in volunteering is the one made up of busy 30-49 year old parents with children. The group with the lowest civic engagement is instead made up from people with lower education, unemployed or old.
Voluntary work is mostly carried out in the following fields: sport, activties related to housing and local comnunities and, thirdly, activities related to social and health issues.
Finally, according to Liveng (in Defourny and Pestoff eds., 2008) volunteers seems to be more pragmatic than earlier, that is: they decide to become involved in a volunteer activity through an instrumental view, and so they are less faithful and integrated in a particular organization than earlier (Gundelach, 1996). This can also be due to the fact the third sector organizations have less strong ideological view than before (sometimes caused also by the organizations’ dependence on public support).
