Vinnumálastofnun — Directorate of Labour (VMST)

Unemployment, job vacancies, and work-permit statistics. Monthly data with a rolling multi-year window. The Hagtalnanefnd report (March 2026) explicitly cites VMST's mælaborð, Excel and PDF triple-publication pattern.

Landing page

https://island.is/s/vinnumalastofnun/maelabord-og-toelulegar-upplysingar

(Note: vmst.is/* → island.is/redirects/vmst.is/* 301 redirect.)

Data sources

1. Power BI — "Gagnvirk tölfræði Vinnumálastofnunar"

Interactive dashboard, filterable by region, industry, gender, month, year.

Property	Value
Tenant	764a306d-0a68-45ad-9f07-6f1804447cd4
Report key	e74521bb-e501-4b02-8aa2-08a8bb84d087
Default page	ReportSection7e7dca64570c18a74eb9
Embed URL	https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=<base64> — see scripts/vinnumalastofnun.py

Scrape with the Playwright-intercept pattern (same as landlaeknir, ferdamalastofa, maelabord_landbunadarins).

2. Excel — "Helstu talnagögn um atvinnuleysi"

https://assets.ctfassets.net/8k0h54kbe6bj/688FRtXuoA4qkPXerKcuMT/e6b9794d1bdfcf5cb5747a46b9b3d836/Talnagogn_atvinnuleysi.xlsm

Monthly unemployment time-series workbook. Updated when monthly reports are published (typically second week of the following month). Direct download via httpx — no auth, no scraping.

3. Mánaðarskýrslur (Monthly PDF reports)

Listed on the landing page as a filtered "frétta" view. Each report is a PDF with narrative commentary + summary tables. Used alongside the Excel for context.

Key series

• Skráð atvinnuleysi — registered unemployment rate (monthly, %).
• Fjöldi í atvinnuleit — job-seeker counts by gender, age, region, industry, duration.
• Atvinnuleyfi til erlendra ríkisborgara — work permits issued (law-mandated annual report).
• Mannaflaþörf — labor demand by occupation (annual, law-mandated).

Script usage

# Fetch the Excel workbook + save a copy of the Power BI query responses
uv run python scripts/vinnumalastofnun.py fetch

# Just download the Excel
uv run python scripts/vinnumalastofnun.py excel

# Scrape Power BI only
uv run python scripts/vinnumalastofnun.py powerbi

Data files

Path	Format	Description
data/raw/vinnumalastofnun/Talnagogn_atvinnuleysi.xlsm	Excel	Monthly headline series
data/raw/vinnumalastofnun/powerbi.json	JSON	Raw Power BI executeQueries responses

Caveats

1. Registered ≠ ILO unemployment. VMST reports registered unemployment (people claiming benefits / actively signing on). Hagstofan publishes the ILO-harmonized labour-force-survey rate (vinnumarkaðsrannsókn), which is typically higher and behaves differently over the cycle. Do not compare headlines across the two.
2. Self-employed invisible. Self-employed workers are not typically in VMST's registry. Hagstofa captures them.
3. Revision pattern. Historical months in the Excel occasionally revise when late registrations are reconciled — keep snapshots, don't assume immutability.
4. No published API. The Power BI dashboard has no stable query endpoint; scrape responses and re-extract from the JSON descriptor each run.
5. Excel is .xlsm. Contains macros. Open with openpyxl / polars read_excel — do not execute macros.
6. Encoding. Icelandic chars (þ, ð, æ, ö) in column headers — ensure UTF-8 all the way through.

Complementary sources

Source	Overlap
hagstofan	ILO unemployment via labour-force survey (VIN01101, VIN01000)
opnirreikningar	VMST benefit payments appear in government invoice data