Atvinnustyrkir

Atvinnustyrkir is the Icelandic term for a structured system of job classification that is employed by various public institutions, including the Icelandic statistics office (Statistics Iceland), the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, and major employment agencies. The classification scheme groups occupations into a series of categories based on the nature of duties, required qualifications, and typical working conditions. Each category is assigned a numeric code that facilitates the collection, analysis and comparison of employment data across sectors and over time.

The system traces its origins to the 1930s when Iceland began to develop a national framework for occupational statistics. Over the ensuing decades the classification has been revised several times to accommodate changes in the economy, such as the expansion of the tourism industry and the growth of information technology sectors. The most recent revision, published in 2021, introduced three new primary groups and redefined several mid-level categories to reflect the evolving skill requirements of modern workplaces. Iceland’s classification approach has been found to be comparable with the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) used by many other countries, and therefore it is often used in cross-national labor market studies.

In practice, anvinnustyrkir codes are used by employers to report hires and layoffs to the government, allowing the ministry to monitor sectoral labor flows and to assess the effectiveness of training and development programmes. Unemployment and labor force surveys also rely on the classification to group respondents by occupation, enabling insights into workforce demand, wage differentials, and gender and age disparities. Because the classification is regularly updated, both researchers and policy makers can track changes in occupational structure with a high degree of reliability, making it a fundamental tool for Iceland’s labor market analysis.