Taxable wages in the cultural and creative industries amounted to 50 billion ISK in 2024 and had increased by 5.6% from the previous year, when the total taxable wages were 47.5 billion ISK. In comparison, the increase in taxable wages for the whole labour force was 7.1%.

In 2024, operating revenue in cultural and creative industries was approximately 179 billion ISK and increased about 6.0% from 2023 when it was about 169 billion ISK. In 2024 prices, the increase was about 0.1%.

In 2025, 12,900 people aged 16–74 were employed in the cultural and creative industries, which corresponds to 5.7% of the Icelandic labour market, according to Statistics Iceland’s Labour force survey. This share decreased by 15.2% from the previous year, when the ratio was at 6.7%. Over a ten‑year period, the number of people employed in […]

In the third quarter of 2025, libraries lent from their collections to about 16% of residents in Iceland. This share was similar to the same quarter a year earlier, when it was 16.4%. These figures are among new statistics from Statistics Iceland on library borrowers for the period 2023–2025.

The total revenue in external trade services in cultural and creative industries was 19.6 billion ISK in 2024. Audio-and visual services had by far the highest amount of revenue, 13.1 billion ISK. Information services had 5.7 billion ISK, and copyright payments had 761.9 million ISK. Architectural services did not have any available data for the […]

In December 2024 there were 7,069 staff members working in pre-primary schools in Iceland, an increase of 106 from the previous year. Of those, 1,504 were educated as pre-primary teachers and 307 as other licenced teachers. There were over 20,200 children attending pre-primary schools in Iceland in December 2024.

Most students graduating with a matriculation examination in 2025 graduated from a line of study programmes classified as “other”, i.e. unspecified or open study tracks. This is the first year in nearly a decade, since 2016, that the natural sciences line of study was not the largest among graduating students.

The enrolment rate at the tertiary level decreased slightly between 2024 and 2025 according to Statistics Iceland‘s new data on education enrolment. The largest decrease among men was observed among 25-year-olds, where the enrolment rate fell from 13.7% in 2024 to 10.8% in 2025. Among women, the largest decrease was among 26-year-olds , from 20.7% […]

There were over 20,200 children attending pre-primary schools in Iceland in December 2024. The proportion of children attending pre-primary school was 88% and had increased by 2% from previous year, when compared with children 1-5 years old. The proportion of one year olds in pre-primary schools varies greatly by region, highest 84% in the Westfjords […]

A total of 5,276 students graduated from university in 2024. The largest number of graduates were from the field of social sciences, and women made up the majority of graduates in most fields. In total, 3,630 university graduates were female and 1,646 were male. Roughly half of the graduates, or 51.4%, completed a first university […]

In total, 3,540 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the second quarter of 2026, according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. During the same period, about 247,560 jobs were occupied and the job vacancy rate was 1.4%.

Publication of a news release on the labour market in the second quarter of 2026, which was scheduled today 6 August 2026, has been postponed until further notice.

In June 2026, there were 11,500 unemployed individuals aged 16 to 74 according to seasonally adjusted results from Icelandic Labour force survey. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5%, the employment rate 74.4%, and the activity rate 78.4%. Seasonally adjusted unemployment decreased by 0.6 percentage points between May and June, the employment rate decreased by […]

In total, 227,700 individuals were employed in the Icelandic labour market in May 2026, according to register-based data. The number of employed increased by around 1,200 between years, which corresponds to an increase of 0.5%. The number of employed females in May was around 106,700 and the number of males around 121,000.

In May 2026, there were 13,100 unemployed individuals aged 16 to 74 according to seasonally adjusted results from the Icelandic Labour Force Survey. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.6%, the employment rate 76.5%, and the activity rate 81.1%. Overall, these indicators remained largely unchanged from the previous month, although there was a slight increase […]