According to The Work-from-Anywhere Index, Copenhagen fails to attract digital nomads. The city ranks 70th on a list that explores 75 worldwide cities. It’s one of the worse cities for digital nomads looking for a new home. The Danish capital is well known for brutal weather, high tax rate, living costs, and expensive and competitive accommodation.
Digital nomads and remote workers have been around for a few years. However, after the global pandemic and travel restriction, this style of life is one of the best solutions to move to different places. Countries like Croatia, Albania, or Indonesia extend their visas permission to attract digital nomads for a longer stay.
As a North European city, however, Copenhagen has high living costs. With a foreign salary, it’s hard to keep up with food and health insurance expenses as well as decent accommodation.
Why Does Copenhagen Not Attract Digital Nomads?
- Lack of Legislation: Not used to remote work or digital nomads, the country doesn’t offer solid work-from-anywhere policies to attract foreign-employed workers. At the moment, they only provide visas to those working on-site.
- Income tax, office rent, and cost of living: Second only to Brussels (47.7), Denmark has a 43.8% tax rate. In addition, the average price for a room is around €1,059, almost three times the average price in Estonia or Croatia. Finally, living costs are pretty high. Between food and health insurance, fixed monthly fees make the stay in the country quite expensive.
- No Visas: Cities like Melbourne or Sidney are also pretty expensive but offer Digital Nomad Visas. Among the 75 cities, just ten cities in the 75 offer this type of solution. For this reason, cities like Prague (11), Lisbon (15), Reykjavik (23), Athens (31), Zagreb (43), and Mexico City (66) are better options.
The global shift to remote work is leaving its traces in the workforce. Cheaper and less advanced countries are moving to attract international workers and digital nomads, while more affluent and northern countries need to catch up because of their high and prohibitive costs.