Benefit payments in Iceland have increased more than salaries over the last year. While salaries have increased by 6.1 percent, social security payments have gone up by 10 percent during the same period, according to Tímund, the newsletter of the Icelandic Directorate of Internal Revenue.
“It is interesting that payments from the Social Insurance Administration have increased by 27.2 percent in real terms since 2010 at the same time as salaries have increased by 14.4 percent. Then social benefit payments did not decrease during the recession, unlike salaries. They [social security payments] have increased by 27.1 percent when compared to the year 2007 but salaries are still 8.2 percent lower than they were then,” writes Páll Kolbeins, operations economist at the Icelandic Directorate of Internal Revenue, in the newsletter.
