OECD employment rate increases to 65.9% in fourth quarter of 2014, 0.6 percentage point higher than one year before | WPN World People News

The OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age who are in employment – was 65.9% in the fourth quarter of 2014, 0.2 percentage point higher than in the previous quarter. Over the course of 2014, the increase in the OECD employment rate (up 0.6 percentage points between the fourth quarter of 2013 and the fourth quarter of 2014) was twice as fast than the year before (between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the fourth quarter of 2013).

In the fourth quarter of 2014, compared to the previous quarter, the employment rate increased by 0.3 percentage point in the United States (to 68.5%) and in Canada (to 72.5%), by 0.2 percentage point in the United Kingdom (to 72.2%) and in Japan (to 73.0%) and by 0.1 percentage point in the euro area (to 64.1%).

Over the course of 2014, increases were observed in 27 OECD countries, with the highest rises in Hungary (by 3.2 percentage points to 62.3%), Estonia (by 2.2 percentage points to 70.4%), Poland (by 1.9 percentage points to 62.4%), the Slovak Republic (by 1.7 percentage points to 61.6%) and Spain (by 1.7 percentage points to 56.7%). Among the six OECD countries where employment rates declined between the fourth quarter of 2013 and the fourth quarter of 2014, the employment rate was stable or increased in the fourth quarter of 2014 for five of them.

Compared with the fourth quarter of 2013, the OECD youth employment rate also increased by 0.6 percentage point (to 39.9%), but with disparities across OECD countries. The youth employment rate increased by 1.5 percentage points in the United States (to 48.3%), while it was stable in the euro area (at 30.8%). Over the same period, the annual increase in the OECD employment rate for women (up 0.5 percentage point to 58.1%) was broadly the same as for men (up 0.6 percentage point to 73.8%), but it was more widespread across OECD countries (30 of them showed an increase in the female employment rate, as compared to only 24 in the case of the male employment rate).

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development