Unemployment across OECD countries remains below pre-crash low

Unemployment in 36 of the world’s economies fell to 5.2 per cent in April, a lower rate than at the height of the previous economic boom.

The unemployment rate among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) dipped 0.1 percentage point, as did the rate in the euro zone although the total percentage of people unemployed was 7.6 per cent.

Spain and Italy were the two European countries with the highest unemployment rate in April, at 13.8 per cent and 10.2 per cent respectively. Greece had the highest rate in March (18.1 per cent) although data for April was not available.

On the other side of the table in Europe, Germany, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland and the Netherlands had a lower rate than Ireland which recorded an unemployment rate of 4.6 per cent. The Czech Republic's rate of 2.1 per cent was the lowest in the list of 36 countries.

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Globally, Japan, with just 2.4 per cent of the population not in work, and the US, with an unemployment rate of 3.6 per cent, performed well.

Some countries saw minor increases of the unemployment rate. The rate rose 0.2 percentage points in Portugal and 0.3 percentage points in Korea.

Across the OECD, youth unemployment was stable at 11.1 per cent with 8.1 million young people unemployed. In Ireland, Latvia and Spain, the rate dropped by 1 percentage point or more. In Italy, the rate was 31.4 per cent and in Spain it was 32.7 per cent. In Greece, where data was only available for March, the youth unemployment rate was 40.4 per cent.