In total, 6,230 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the second quarter of 2023 according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time, the number of occupied jobs was around 240,300 and the job vacancy rate therefore 2.5% (see confidence intervals in table). The number of vacant jobs decreased by 1,910 from the first quarter of 2023 and the job vacancy rate decreased by 1.0 percentage points. Comparison with the second quarter of 2022 shows that the number of vacant jobs decreased by around 6.800 between years and the job vacancy rate decreased by 2.9 percentage points.
About the data
The Icelandic Job Vacancy Survey is a sample survey, performed quarterly amongst legal entities in Iceland. The population consists of all legal entities in Iceland with more than one employee at the reference date of the survey. The sample is selected once every year, at the beginning of the year, from a sampling frame listing all legal entities in the year before based on Statistics Icelands‘ enterprise registry. The reference date for the first quarter of 2023 was 15 May, 562 responded and the response rate was 90,2%.
Along with the update of figures for the second quarter of 2023 the whole time-series for the counts of employed in sector C. was updated. Processing errors resulted in the number of employed in the sector being too low (the difference was between 4.700 and 5.200 jobs). The error affected the vacancy rate in the economic activity reducing the rate between 0,2 and 1.1 percentage points.
Information about the number of occupied jobs comes from register data which is constantly revised and updated. To minimisze changes to the time-series, figures about occupied jobs are fixed when twelve months have passed from the reference period of the results. Statistics Iceland intends to revise the figures every three years if significant changes are visible in older figures.
When interpreting the results of vacant jobs and the job vacancy rate, it is important to keep in mind that they are built on a sample survey at a given reference period. Therefore, the results should be interpreted by taking the 95% confidence intervals into consideration.