OECD employment rate increases to 67.2% in the fourth quarter of 2016 | WPN World People News

The OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age in employment – increased by 0.2 percentage point in the fourth quarter of 2016, to 67.2%.

Compared to the previous quarter, the employment rate increased by 0.5 percentage point in Canada (to 72.9%), by 0.2 percentage point in the euro area (to 65.7%), the United Kingdom (to 73.7%) and the United States (to 69.5%) and by 0.1 percentage point in Japan (to 74.7%), Korea (to 66.3%) and Turkey (to 50.5%). Over the same period, the employment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point in Mexico (to 61.0%).

Compared to the fourth quarter of 2015, the OECD area employment rate was 0.7 percentage point higher, with about half of this increase resulting from a rise in labour force participation and the other half from a decrease in unemployment rates. The increase in labour force participation explained most of the rise in the employment rate in New Zealand (up 2.2 percentage points, to 76.3%), the Czech Republic (up 2.2 percentage points, to 72.8%) and Japan (up 1.0 percentage point).

By contrast, the drop in the unemployment rate explained most of the increase in the euro area employment rate (up 0.9 percentage point compared to the fourth quarter of 2015), which was particularly marked in the Slovak Republic (up 1.9 percentage points, to 65.4%), Ireland (up 1.8 percentage points, to 65.5%), Belgium (up 1.7 percentage points, to 63.3%), Portugal (up 1.7 percentage points, to 66.0%) and Spain (up 1.5 percentage points, to 60.1%).

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development