In total, 6,220 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the fourth quarter of 2022 according to Statistics Icelands’ Job Vacancy Survey. At the same time, the number of occupied jobs was around 230,800 and the job vacancy rate therefore 2.6% (see confidence intervals in table). In comparison, around 7,200 individuals were unemployed in the Icelandic labour market in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the unemployment rate 3.3%. Comparison with the fourth quarter of 2021 shows that the number of vacant jobs increased by 850 between years and the job vacancy rate increased by 0.2 percentage points.
The demand for employees was highest in the economic activity Construction where 1,470 jobs were vacant and the job vacancy rate 8.1%. Comparison with the fourth quarter of 2021 shows that vacant jobs in construction increased by 590 between years and the job vacancy rate increased by 2.4 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 2022 was 15 November, the net sample size was 549 and the response rate was 99.6%.
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.