In total, 6,440 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the first quarter of 2022 according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time, the number of occupied jobs was around 209,700 and the job vacancy rate therefore 3.0% (see confidence intervals in table).
Vacant jobs increased by just over 1,000 jobs now compared with the fourth quarter of 2021 and the job vacancy rate increased by 0.5 percentage points over the period. Compared with the first quarter of 2021 the number of vacant jobs increased by 2,200 and the job vacancy rate increased by 0.8 percentage points between years.
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. The sample is constructed once every year, at the beginning of the year, from a sampling frame listing all legal entities in the year before. The reference date for the first quarter of 2022 was 15 February and the response rate was 92%.
Information about the number of occupied jobs comes from register data which is constantly revised and updated. To minimize unnecessary fluctuation and 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 any remarkable changes are seen 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.