In total, 6,750 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the third quarter of 2023 according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time, the number of occupied jobs was 243,460 and the job vacancy rate therefore 2.7% (see confidence intervals in table). The number of vacant jobs increased by 340 jobs from the second quarter of 2023 and the job vacancy rate increased by 0.1 percentage points. Comparison with the third quarter of 2023 shows that the number of vacant jobs decreased by 2,310 between years and the job vacancy rate decreased by 1.0 percentage points.
The demand for employees was highest amongst industries in Construction. The number of vacant jobs in the sector was 1,690 and the job vacancy rate was 8.6%. The job vacancy survey results show that the number of vacant jobs in the industry was almost equal between years or 10 fewer in 2023. The number of occupied jobs increased by 1,570 between years and the job vacancy rate decreased by 0.8 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 third quarter of 2023 was 15 August, 576 responded and the response rate was 92.8%.
Information about the number of occupied jobs comes from register data which is constantly revised and updated. To minimise 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.