OECD unemployment rate stable at 5.4% in February 2018 | WPN World People News

The OECD unemployment rate was stable at 5.4% in February 2018. Across the OECD area, 34.2 million people were unemployed, 1.5 million more than in April 2008, but 14.9 million below the January 2013 peak.

In the euro area, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage point, to 8.5% in February, with declines of 0.2 percentage point or more in Latvia (down 0.3 percentage point, to 8.0%) and Italy (down 0.2 percentage point, to 10.9%).

The unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point in Canada (to 5.8%), and was stable in Korea (at 3.6%) and Mexico (at 3.3%) but increased by 0.1 percentage point in Japan (to 2.5%). More recent data for March show that the unemployment rate was stable in Canada and remained at 4.1% in the United States (for the sixth straight month).

The OECD unemployment rate for youth (people aged 15 to 24) increased slightly (by 0.1 percentage point, to 11.3%) in February. In the euro area,the largest increases (by 0.3 percentage point) were registered in Austria (to 9.8%) and Italy (to 32.8%), while the largest falls were recorded in Latvia (down 1.1 percentage points, to 16.5%), Spain (down 0.4 percentage point, to 35.5%) and Luxembourg (down 0.3 percentage point, to 13.8%). The youth unemployment rate remained highest in Greece (at 45.0% in December 2017, the latest month available), followed by Spain and Italy (with rates above 30%).

Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development