Unemployment Hits New Low

Unemployment has been steadily been decreasing, year by year, and even long-term unemployment has dipped below 1%.

RÚV reports that, according to new data from Statistics Iceland, unemployment in Iceland was at 2.5% for the last quarter of 2016. This reflects a continuing trend over the past four years: in the last quarter of 2013, unemployment was at 4.5%; 4.1% in the last quarter of 2014; and 3.1% at the last quarter of 2015.

Furthermore, long term unemployment has also been on the wane. Only 0.2% of those who are eligible for work have been unemployed for a year or longer. This is in fact the lowest unemployment has been since late 2008.

For the record, the highest rate of unemployment in Iceland in recent years was in the second quarter of 2009. During this time, as many readers will recall, Iceland was still embroiled in the midst of a financial collapse and had newly faced a political crisis. Unemployment for this period was at just over 9%.