According to a survey conducted by Business Iceland (link in Icelandic) 2,100 new jobs will be created in Iceland in the next six months, mostly in the travel and construction industries.
The two are closely related as Iceland’s booming tourism industry has created a big demand for more hotels at a time when the strong economic recovery, which is largely driven by tourism, creates demand for residential construction.
Over half of executives of companies in industry, retail and construction expect facing a shortage of qualified workers. The natural growth in Iceland’s labour force is nowhere enough to meet the growth.
The unemployment rate keeps going down. It was 2.9% in August, or 0.8 points lower than in August 2015, according to Statistics Iceland (SI).
As we have previously reported the number of foreign workers in Iceland is expected to have topped 19,000 by 2017, and their portion of the total labour force to be 9.9%.
Read more: Iceland needs at least 5,000 immigrants in the next four years to ensure adequate labour supply
The most recent projections (link in Icelandic) for the increase in tourism envisions 38.7% more foreign visitors in 2016 than 2015 and the forecast for 2017 is a growth of 26.6% from 2016. This year 1.7 million visitors are expected and that number is anticipated to reach 2.2 million in 2017.
According to a survey conducted by Business Iceland (link in Icelandic) 2,100 new jobs will be created in Iceland in the next six months, mostly in the travel and construction industries.
The two are closely related as Iceland’s booming tourism industry has created a big demand for more hotels at a time when the strong economic recovery, which is largely driven by tourism, creates demand for residential construction.
Over half of executives of companies in industry, retail and construction expect facing a shortage of qualified workers. The natural growth in Iceland’s labour force is nowhere enough to meet the growth.
The unemployment rate keeps going down. It was 2.9% in August, or 0.8 points lower than in August 2015, according to Statistics Iceland (SI).
As we have previously reported the number of foreign workers in Iceland is expected to have topped 19,000 by 2017, and their portion of the total labour force to be 9.9%.
Read more: Iceland needs at least 5,000 immigrants in the next four years to ensure adequate labour supply
The most recent projections (link in Icelandic) for the increase in tourism envisions 38.7% more foreign visitors in 2016 than 2015 and the forecast for 2017 is a growth of 26.6% from 2016. This year 1.7 million visitors are expected and that number is anticipated to reach 2.2 million in 2017.
