Who becomes a service assistant? The programme in figures
An adult programme: age, gender and developments since 2015
Introduction
The service assistant programme is one of the VET programmes where almost all students are adults. Statistics Denmark counts how many start, attend and complete the programme each year.
More than eight out of ten are over 30 when they start
In 2025, 625 started the service assistant programmes. 533 of them were 30 or older, and 377 were 40 or older. Only 48 were under 25.
| Age at start (2025) | Number of students |
|---|---|
| Under 25 | 48 |
| 25-29 years | 44 |
| 30-34 years | 60 |
| 35-39 years | 96 |
| 40 years and over | 377 |
| Total | 625 |
468 of the 625 were women (75%), and 313 were immigrants (50%).
Up and down since 2015
| Year | Started | Students as of 1 October | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 538 | 539 | 416 |
| 2017 | 646 | 672 | 518 |
| 2019 | 852 | 688 | 711 |
| 2021 | 882 | 668 | 693 |
| 2022 | 711 | 556 | 607 |
| 2023 | 631 | 505 | 531 |
| 2024 | 710 | 532 | 542 |
| 2025 | 625 | 515 | 519 |
Intake peaked around 2019-2021 and has fallen since. Think about it yourself: what could explain the peak and the drop? Statistics Denmark does not give an explanation.
What it means
Once you have turned 25, you take vocational education and training as EUV — VET for adults. The school assesses your competences and can shorten the programme: for service assistant there are 11 school weeks per stage in EUV compared with 12 for young people, and adults can have 1 week cut on stage 1 and 1 week on stage 2. Many have worked as cleaning assistants, porters or domestic assistants for years, and that experience counts.
Where the jobs are
The graph shows how many schools, day-care institutions, nursing homes and hospitals there are in each municipality. Find your own municipality — it is the service assistant's local labour market.