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 […]

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 […]

During the school year 2024-2025 81.8% of teaching staff in compulsory schools in Iceland had a teaching licence, compared with 81.3 in the previous year. The number of teachers with a teaching licence increased by 57 from the autumn of 2023.

In the autumn of 2017 there were 2,213 new entrants in three year Bachelor’s degree programmes in universities in Iceland. Three years later, 42.3% had graduated on time with a bachelor’s degree. An additional 1.3% had graduated from other tertiary programmes, such as two-year diploma programmes.

There were 44,758 students attending education at levels above compulsory education in Iceland in the autumn of 2024, an increase of 1,312 students from the previous year, or 3.0%. There were more students attending all levels except for the doctoral level, where there were 52 fewer students than in the previous year.

In total, 3,840 jobs were vacant in the Icelandic labour market in the first quarter of 2026, according to Statistics Iceland’s Job Vacancy Survey. During the same period, about 229,870 jobs were occupied and the job vacancy rate was 1.6%.

The main results of the Labour force survey of Statistics Iceland for the first quarter of 2026 show that an average of 234,900 people aged 16 to 74 were in the labour force. Of these, 217,800 were employed, and 17,100 were unemployed and actively seeking work. The activity rate was 80.3%, the employment rate was […]

In total, 216,800 individuals were employed in the Icelandic labour market in March 2026, according to register-based data. The number of employed decreased by around 900 between years, which corresponds to a decrease of 0,4%. The number of employed females in March was around 101,600 and the number of males around 115,200.

In March 2026, there were 14,700 unemployed individuals aged 16 to 74 according to seasonally adjusted results from Icelandic Labour force survey. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.3%, the employment rate 75.4%, and the activity rate 80.5%. Seasonally adjusted unemployment decreased by 0.7 percentage points between February and March, the employment rate decreased by […]

In total, 216,400 individuals were employed in the Icelandic labour market in February 2026, according to register-based data. The number of employed increased by around 300 between years, which corresponds to an increase of 0.16%. The number of employed females in January was around 101,400 and the number of males around 115,000.