According to the Icelandic Labour Force Survey, the average number of persons in the labour force was 212,900 in the 2nd quarter of 2019, or 82.9% of the population. Of these, 9,400 persons were unemployed, or 4.4%. At the same time, about 6,200 jobs were available on the Icelandic labor market, according to Statistics Iceland's job registration, or about 2.7% of jobs, according to previously published figures. The number of unemployed people are therefore 1.5 as many as the number of vacant job positions in the 2nd quarter compared to twice as many in the 1st quarter of 2019. The number of employed persons in the 2nd quarter was 203,500, or 79.2% of the population.
Unemployment increased by 0.9 percentage points from the 2nd quarter of 2018 and the employment rate decreased by 0.8 percentage points.
About 44,000 persons were considered inactive in the first quarter of 2019. The majority of people in this group, or 13,700 persons (31.5%), defined themselves as retired. The second largest group define themselves as disabled about 9,800 persons or 22.2% of all inactive.
Hours worked weekly
In the 2nd quarter of 2019, 184,500 persons aged 16-74 were at work on average during the reference week and the average total number of hours worked per week was 39.7 hours. However, those who worked full-time worked considerably more or 43 hours on average during the reference week, while the average number of working hours for persons working part-time was about 25.9 hours.