According to the Icelandic Labour Force Survey, the average number of persons in the labour force was 208,800 in the 3rd quarter of 2019, or 80.8% of the population. Of these, 7,200 persons were unemployed, or 3.5%. At the same time, about 4,500 jobs were available on the Icelandic labour market, according to Statistics Iceland’s job registration, or about 1.9% of jobs, according to previously published figures. The number of employed persons in the 3rd quarter was 201,600, or 78.0% of the population.
Unemployment increased by 1.3 percentage points from the 3rd quarter of 2018 and the employment rate decreased by 2.6 percentage points from the same quarter in 2018.
About 49,600 persons were considered inactive in the third quarter of 2019.
Hours worked weekly
In the 3rd quarter of 2019, 162,600 persons aged 16-74 were estimated to be at work on average during the reference week and the average total number of hours worked per week was 40.8 hours. However, those who worked full-time worked considerably more or 45.2 hours on average during the reference week, while the average number of working hours for persons working part-time was about 24.5 hours.
Due to revisions of the production process of labor force survey data the tables "Unemployment by duration of search for job 2003-2019", "Inactive by status and quarters 2003-2019" and "Students - Activity rate, unemployment, labour force and working hours by quarters 2003-2019" will not be updated for the 3rd quarter of 2019.