In March 2026, there were 14,700 unemployed individuals aged 16 to 74 according to seasonally adjusted results from Icelandic Labour force survey. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.3%, the employment rate 75.4%, and the activity rate 80.5%. Seasonally adjusted unemployment decreased by 0.7 percentage points between February and March, the employment rate decreased by 0.3 percentage points, and the activity rate decreased by one percentage point.
According to the unadjusted measurements, unemployment was 6.4% in March 2026. The number of unemployed individuals was around 15,100. The employment rate was 75.5%, corresponding to just under 221,000 people, and the activity rate was 80.6%, or about 236,100 individuals in the labour force. Compared with the same month in 2025, measured unemployment increased by 2.7 percentage points, the employment rate fell by 2.4 percentage points, and the activity rate remainded largely unchanged.
Since November 2025, the response rate in the Labour force survey has notably increased, particularly among immigrants (aged 16 to 74), where the response rate has risen from around and above 17% on average over the past two years to nearly 41% in February 2026. This has led to changes in the underlying assumptions used in the processing of the survey, and to adapt to these new conditions, the survey weights have been reassessed. The monthly results of the Labour force survey for Desember 2025 and January and February 2026 have therefore been recalculated using this new method.