Harmonised Unemployment Rates (HURs), OECD - Updated: July 2019 | WPN World People News

The OECD unemployment rate was stable in May 2019 at 5.2%, 0.3 percentage point below its June 2007 low. Across the OECD area, 33.1 million people were unemployed.

In the euro area, the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point, to 7.5% in May, with declines of 0.2 percentage point in Italy (to 9.9%) and Spain (to 13.6%).

Outside Europe, the unemployment rate decreased by 0.3 percentage point in Canada (to 5.4%), by 0.2 percentage point in Israel (to 3.6%) and by 0.1 percentage point in Korea (to 4.0%) while it was stable in Australia (at 5.2%), Japan (at 2.4%), Mexico (at 3.5%) and the United States (at 3.6%).More recent data show that in June, the unemployment rate increased by 0.1 percentage point in Canada (to 5.5%) and the United States (to 3.7%).

While the OECD unemployment rate for men (at 5.1% in May 2019) remained marginally lower than that for women (at 5.3%), in the case of young people (aged 15 to 24), the unemployment rate for men (at 11.6%) was 0.9 percentage point higher than that for women (10.7%).

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development