Sick pay in Denmark: full salary, the 30-day employer period and refunds

A salaried employee in Denmark who is off sick keeps receiving full pay. Under Funktionærloven § 5(1), illness counts as lawful absence, so the contract simply carries on and the monthly salary is paid as usual. There are no waiting days: the employer’s obligation runs from the first day of absence.

Illness caused by the job sits on a separate track. Cover for industrial accidents comes from the work-injury policy each employer is obliged to buy privately, and occupational disease is covered through AES, funded by the contribution every employer pays alongside ATP. Those schemes compensate the employee for the injury or disease; they do not replace the salary rules described here.

That surprises some foreign employers, who expect a reduced rate or a few unpaid days at the start. Denmark has neither for salaried staff. What it does have is a public sickness benefit (sygedagpenge) behind the salary, and once an absence passes 30 days the employer can claim that benefit back from the municipality as a refund. The salary stays the same; the net cost to the employer falls.

Employees who are not covered by Funktionærloven, typically hourly-paid staff, do not have a statutory right to full salary. They receive sickness benefit instead, paid by the employer for the first 30 days and by the municipality after that, unless a collective agreement or contract gives them more. The rest of this article deals with salaried hires.

The Sickness Benefit Act (Sygedagpengeloven) sets a clear sequence. Using a salaried employee off sick from a Monday morning as the example:

• Day 1, within two hours: The employee must report the illness to the employer no later than two hours after work would have started. Missing that deadline without good reason can cost the pay for that day.
• Days 1 to 30: This is the employer period (arbejdsgiverperiode). The employer carries the cost alone. The 30 days are calendar days, and holidays falling inside them do not extend the period.
• After day 14: If the absence passes 14 days, the employer may ask for a doctor’s statement of how long the illness is expected to last, and the employee does not pay for it.
• From day 31: The municipality takes over the sickness benefit. Because a salaried employee is still on full pay, the employer claims the benefit as a refund, capped at the salary actually paid.
• After 22 weeks within 9 months: Municipal benefit normally stops at this point unless an extension rule applies, and the municipality reassesses the case. The employer’s first 30 days do not count towards the 22 weeks.

The employer period only applies where the employee has worked for you for the last 8 weeks and for at least 74 hours in that time. A salaried new starter who falls ill in week three still keeps full salary under Funktionærloven; the 8-week condition matters most for hourly staff, whose only income while ill is sickness benefit.

From the 31st day, the employer can recover up to the maximum sickness benefit, which is DKK 5,085 a week in 2026, or DKK 137.43 an hour. At a monthly salary of DKK 55,000, pay during sickness is well above that cap, so the refund covers only part of what you continue to pay. The difference stays with the employer.

To qualify for municipal benefit, the employee must have worked at least 240 hours in the six complete months before the absence, with at least 40 hours in each of five of those months. Most full-time staff meet that easily, but a person who has just moved from abroad may not, and in that case there may be nothing to refund.

Pay during sickness is ordinary pay for tax and payroll purposes. It goes through the normal monthly run, A-skat and the 8% AM-bidrag are withheld from it, ATP continues, and the whole amount is reported to the income register through eIndkomst. The refund arrives separately and does not change what the employee sees on the payslip.

The 2026 maximum comes from official guidance issued on 15 January 2026; the statute itself, including the employer period in section 30, is on Retsinformation.

Numbers make the split clearer. Picture a salaried hire earning DKK 55,000 monthly on a 37-hour contract, who is off for six weeks after an operation and meets the hours conditions for municipal benefit.

For the whole six weeks the employee receives normal salary, roughly DKK 76,000 for the period, with A-skat, AM-bidrag and ATP handled exactly as in any other month. The employer pays all of it.

Days 1 to 30 are the employer period, so nothing comes back for them. Days 31 to 42 fall within the municipal period. At 37 hours a week, the hourly maximum of DKK 137.43 gives almost exactly the weekly cap of DKK 5,085, so the refund for those 12 days comes to a little under DKK 8,750. The rest, close to DKK 67,000, is the employer’s real cost of the absence. Treat these as rounded illustrations; the municipality’s own calculation decides the refund.

Two things change that answer. A short absence of under 30 days produces no refund at all, and most absences are short. A chronic-illness agreement, covered next, brings the refund forward to the first day for absences linked to the condition.

An employee with a long-term or chronic condition that is likely to cause repeated absences can enter an agreement with the employer under section 56 of the Sickness Benefit Act. With that agreement in place, the employer receives the refund from the first day of each absence linked to the condition, instead of carrying the first 30 days alone.

The point of the scheme is to make it less risky to hire and keep people whose health is predictable but not perfect. It should come up as an offer to the employee and never feel like a condition of keeping the job. If an employee mentions a diagnosis that leads to frequent short absences, it is worth knowing the option exists so that you can tell them about it.

The refund claims that follow run through the employer, so when you employ through an employer of record, that employer is the one who files them.

Funktionærloven contains an optional exit route for long illness, known as the 120-day rule (120-dages-reglen). It only works if the written contract includes it. When it does, an employer may dismiss a salaried employee on a shortened notice of one month, running to a month end, once that employee has been paid through 120 sick days, counted together, inside any 12-month stretch.

The timing is strict. Notice has to be given right after the 120th sick day, and while the employee is still off sick. The count is a total across the 12 months, so several shorter spells can add up to 120 days. Keep a dated record of every paid sick day for each employee, because the window looks back over any 12 consecutive months rather than the calendar year.

Whether to include the clause is a decision for the offer stage, not when someone is already ill. Without it, the ordinary notice periods apply in full, which can mean three to six months for an established employee; our guide to notice periods and severance sets those out.

Using the clause does not remove the other protections. Dismissing someone because of a disability, for example, can still be discrimination, so look at whether reasonable adjustments would let the person return before relying on the 120-day count.

Illness and holiday interact under the Holiday Act (Ferieloven). An employee who is sick when a planned holiday is due to start does not have to begin the holiday, and the days can be taken later. An employee who falls ill during a holiday is entitled to replacement holiday, but only after five sick days, and only with a medical certificate that the employee pays for.

For an employer this mainly affects planning. Main holiday of three consecutive weeks has to be placed between 1 May and 30 September, so an illness in July can push holiday into August or September and leave gaps in cover you did not expect. If a long absence means the employee cannot use all their holiday before the taking period closes on 31 December, the days beyond the first four weeks can be transferred to the next period by written agreement, or paid out once the holiday year is over. How holiday is earned and paid is covered separately in our Ferieloven guide for employers.

Sickness administration in Denmark is a series of small, dated tasks: recording the absence, keeping salary running, requesting a doctor’s statement if needed, reporting to the municipality in time to claim the refund, and following the 22-week reassessment. Each one has a date attached, and most of them fall to whoever is the legal employer.

When Employer of Record Denmark employs the person, those tasks sit with us. You tell us when someone is off and when they return; we keep payroll running, file the refund claims, track the 120-day count where the contract has the clause, and flag the dates that matter. Line management, contact with the employee and decisions about adjustments to the role stay with you. In a team spread across time zones, settle in advance who receives a sick call: the two-hour limit runs from the employee’s own start time in Denmark, so the channel, whether email, chat or a phone number, should be written into the staff guidance and checked by someone awake at that hour.

If you are building the first Danish contract now, decide early whether to include the 120-day clause and how you want sickness reported. Both go into the written terms handed over when the job begins; the steps from offer to first payslip show where they fit.

Q01Do salaried employees in Denmark get paid when they are sick?+

A.Yes. Under Funktionærloven illness is lawful absence and a salaried employee keeps full pay from the first day, with no waiting days.

Q02What is the employer period for sickness in Denmark?+

A.The first 30 calendar days of an absence, during which the employer bears the cost. From then on the municipality pays sickness benefit, which goes to the employer as a refund if salary is still being paid.

Q03How much sickness benefit can an employer reclaim?+

A.Up to the 2026 maximum of DKK 5,085 a week (DKK 137.43 an hour), and never more than the salary actually paid for the period.

Q04How quickly must an employee report sickness?+

A.No later than two hours after the time work would normally have started. Reporting late without an acceptable reason can mean losing pay for that day.

Q05Can an employer dismiss someone who has been sick for a long time?+

A.If the contract contains the 120-day clause, someone with 120 paid sick days inside 12 months can be given one month’s notice, right after the 120th day and while still sick. Without the clause, normal notice applies, and discrimination law still protects the employee.