OECD unemployment rate at 7.0% in January 2015 | WPN World People News

The OECD unemployment rate was stable at 7.0% in January 2015. Across the OECD area, 43.1 million people were unemployed, 6.5 million less than at the peak recorded in April 2010, but still 8.7 million more than in July 2008.

OECD Harmonised Unemployment Rates, s.a.

(1) The United Kingdom figure refers to November 2014 data compared to October 2014 and November 2013 data.‌‌‌

In the euro area, the unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point, to 11.2%, the third consecutive monthly decline, with the largest falls recorded in Portugal (by 0.3 percentage point, to 13.3%), Ireland (by 0.2 percentage point, to 10.0%, the 11th consecutive monthly decline) and Spain (by 0.2 percentage point, to 23.4%, the 17th consecutive monthly decline).

The unemployment rate in January also fell in Canada (by 0.1 percentage point, to 6.6%) but increased in Australia (by 0.3 percentage point, to 6.4%), Japan (by 0.2 percentage point, to 3.6%) and the United States (by 0.1 percentage point, to 5.7%). More recent data referring to February 2015, however, show that the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage point (to 5.5%) in the United States.

The OECD youth unemployment rate (among 15-24 year-olds) fell by 0.1 percentage point, to 14.4% in January. This is 3 percentage points below the peak recorded in October 2009. Youth unemployment remains however exceptionally high in several euro area countries such as Greece (50.6% in November, the latest month available), Italy (41.2%), Portugal (33.6%) and Spain (50.9%). The OECD unemployment rates for women (7.1%) and men (7.0%) were stable.

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development