In total, 4,690 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the fourth quarter of 2023 according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time, the number of occupied jobs was around 238,000 and the job vacancy rate therefore 1.9% (see confidence intervals in table).
The number of vacant jobs was 2,150 fewer now than in the third quarter of 2023 and the job vacancy rate decreased by 0.8 percentage points between quarters. Comparison with the fourth quarter of 2022 shows that the number of vacant jobs decreased by 1,460 between years and the job vacancy rate decreased by 0.7 percentage points.
The demand for employees was highest amongst individuals in Construction as it has been in the past six quarters. There were 1,130 vacant jobs in Construction and the job vacancy rate was 6.6%.
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 one or more employees 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 fourth quarter of 2023 was 15 November, 563 responded and the response rate was 91%.
Information about the number of occupied jobs comes from register data which is constantly revised and updated. To minimize 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.