Harmonised Unemployment Rates (HURs), OECD - Updated: April 2019
OECD unemployment rate down to 5.2% in February 2019
The OECD unemployment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point, to 5.2%, in February 2019, with the number of unemployed decreasing by 0.8 million. Across the OECD area, 33.3 million people were unemployed.
Source: Labour Force Statistics
The unemployment rate in February was stable in the euro area (at 7.8%), with increases of 0.2 percentage point in Austria (to 5.0%), Italy (to 10.7%) and Luxembourg (to 5.3%), and decreases of 0.2 percentage point or more in Portugal (to 6.3%), the Netherlands (to 3.4%) and Spain (to 13.9%).
Outside Europe, the unemployment rate declined by 0.7 percentage point in Korea (to 3.7%), by 0.2 percentage point in Japan (to 2.3%) and the United States (to 3.8%), while it was stable in Canada (at 5.8%) and Mexico (at 3.4%). More recent data show that in March, the unemployment rate was stable in both Canada (at 5.8%) and the United States (at 3.8%).
The OECD unemployment rate for youth (people aged 15 to 24) remained at 11.2% in February. The youth unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point in the euro area, to 16.1% (its lowest level since July 2008), with decreases of 1.2 percentage points in Portugal (to 16.4%) and 0.3 percentage point in Latvia (to 13.2%) and the Slovak Republic (to 11.6%),and an increase of 1.0 percentage point in Luxembourg (to 12.9%). The youth unemployment rate remained above 30% in Spain (at 32.4%), Italy (at 32.8%) and Greece (at 39.5% in December, the latest month available).
Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
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