Approximately 7,600 (±1,700) jobs were vacant in the second quarter of 2021 according to the results of Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time the number of occupied jobs on the Icelandic labour market was estimated to be 183,300 (±10,900) resulting in a 4.0% (±0.8) job vacancy rate.
Comparison with 2020 shows that there were 5,100 more vacant jobs in the second quarter of 2021 compared with the same quarter in 2020. The number of occupied jobs decreased by 6,700 between years and the job vacancy rate increased by 2.7 percentage points.
Compared with the first quarter of 2021, the number of vacant jobs increased by 4,000 between quarters and the number of occupied jobs by 700. The job vacancy rate increased by 2.1 percentage points between quarters.
Results from the Job Vacancy Survey for the second quarter of 2021 show the highest job vacancy rate within the tourism industries 11.8% (±4.0) with 17,900 jobs estimated to be occupied and 2,400 vacant. Figure 3 shows the development of the total number of occupied jobs and job vacancies in the tourism industries from the beginning of 2019. A comparison of the results for the second quarter of 2021 and 2020 shows an increase in the number of occupied jobs by 4,300 between years and in job vacancies by 2,200.
| Job Vacancy Survey results from second quarter 2021 | ||||
| Measure | Value1 | Standard error2 | Lower interval3 | Upper interval3 |
| Number of vacant jobs | 7,600 | 900 | 6,000 | 9,300 |
| Number of occupied jobs | 183,300 | 5,500 | 172,400 | 194,200 |
| Job vacancy rate | 4.0 | 0.4 | 3.2 | 4.8 |
1 Numbers are rounded to the nearest hundred.
2 Standard error of a measure refers to the variance in measures between samples.
3 The upper and lower interval of a measure refers to the range of the confidence interval around the measure. In repeated samples, the population value will fall within the confidence interval in 95% of cases.
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, in the beginning of the year, from a sampling frame listing all legal entities in the year before. The reference date for the second quarter of 2021 was 15 May and the response rate 91%.
The results are provisional and can change with improved population information. When interpreting the results, it is important to keep in mind that they are built on a sample survey and that the estimated number of occupied jobs is a point estimate at a given reference period. Therefore, the results should be interpreted taking the confidence intervals into consideration.