Foreign workers face nearly triple Icelandic unemployment rate

Unemployment among foreign workers in Iceland is nearly three times higher than among Icelanders, mbl.is reports, citing Inga Sæland, the minister of education and children’s affairs and former minister of social affairs and housing.

Sæland said unemployment affects about 8% of foreign workers, compared with approximately 2.7% to 2.8% among Icelanders. She said foreign nationals are the first to lose their jobs when conditions deteriorate in the labour market.

Foreign workers who have earned the right to unemployment benefits in Iceland can use that entitlement if they lose their jobs, with the cost then falling on the state.

“These are people who have paid their taxes and obligations, into pension funds and trade unions, people who have earned this right,” Sæland said.

She raised the issue on RÚV’s Silfrið programme and later told mbl.is that unemployment among Icelanders had changed little for years. She pointed particularly to tourism and construction, saying that construction was facing serious difficulties and that projects had more or less come to a standstill.

Sæland said she believed foreign nationals who lose their jobs would eventually leave Iceland if they did not quickly find new employment, after using the rights they had earned during their time working in the country.

Asked whether they would therefore become partly dependent on the state, she replied: “Yes.”