The hourly labour cost in Iceland was estimated to be 7,980 ISK in 2024, highest at 10,998 ISK in Financial and insurance activities and lowest at 5,956 ISK in Accomodation and food service activities.
Labour cost refers not only to paid wages but also the non-wage cost of employment, e.g. employers social contributions as well as employment related taxes.
The share of non-wage cost of total labour cost was 20.8% in 2024. Since 2018 the share has been almost stagnant, ranging between 20.4% and 20.8%.
However, a comparison of different economic activites shows a difference. The share of non-wage cost was estimated lowest at 18.7% in Real estate activites and 18.9% in Accommodation and food services. It was estimated highest at 23.1% in the activity of Human health and social work and 22.7% in Education activities.
About the data
Hourly labour cost is based on the Labour cost survey (LCS) which is published every four years and is intended to be a timely indicatior of labour cost in the years the survey is not published. Figures on labour cost and its composition in Iceland are comparable to figures on labour cost in other European countries. Information on labour cost in European countries can be found on Eurostat‘s website.
Labour cost refers to the sum of all paid wages and cost paid by employers related to employment of staff. Hours worked are produced with an ensemble of statistical estimation methods based on Statistics Iceland‘s data, most notably the Icelandic Survey on wages, earnings and labour cost and pay-as-you-earn tax collection according to register data.
Note that in some instances, for example among managers and professionals, fixed-wage contracts can be common. Thus, employees do not get paid overtime, and therefore their working hours might be underestimated. In other cases hours can be overestimated, e.g. when overtime hours are used instead of overpayments and the recorded hours are not worked. Please note that the results are preliminary.