OECD unemployment rate down to 5.1% in August 2019
09/10/2019 – The OECD unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point, to 5.1% in August 2019, the lowest level since data are available for the OECD area (April 1998). Among the OECD area, 32.9 million people were unemployed.
In the euro area, the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point in August, to 7.4%, the same level as in April 2008, just before the financial crisis. The largest declines were observed in Italy (down 0.3 percentage point, to 9.5%) and Portugal (down 0.2 percentage point, to 6.2%).
Outside Europe, the unemployment rate was stable in Canada (at 5.7%), Japan (2.2%), Mexico (3.5%) and the United States (3.7%) and fell by 0.9 percentage point in Korea (to 3.1%). More recent data show that the unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in the United States in September, to 3.5%, the lowest level since December 1969.
In August, the unemployment rate for youth (people aged 15 to 24) was stable at 11.2% in the OECD area. The youth unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 percentage point in the euro area, to 15.4%, with falls of more than 1.0 percentage point in Italy, Latvia and Portugal. However, it remained above 25% in Greece (in the second quarter of 2019), Italy and Spain.
The OECD unemployment rate for women declined by 0.1 percentage point (to 5.2%), slightly above the unemployment rate for men (stable at 5.1%).
– Source: Labour Force Statistics |
- Next publication date: 13 November 2019 –
