OECD unemployment rate drops to 8.5% in December

In December 2010 the OECD area unemployment rate was 8.5%, down 0.1 percentage point from November. The OECD rate (now including Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia, the four countries that joined OECD in 2010) has been stable at around 8.5% since February 2010, despite diverging trends at the national level.

New data show that the unemployment rate for the United States fell by 0.4 percentage point (the second consecutive decline) to 9.0% in January 2011, while the rate for Canada rose by 0.2 percentage point to 7.8%.

France‘s unemployment rate has remained unchanged at 9.7% since June 2010, reflecting the overall stability seen in the European Union unemployment rate. Germany is the only OECD country reporting a lower unemployment rate today than in 2007, at 6.6%. Besides the United States, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain all recorded small declines in unemployment rates in December, compared to small rises in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Korea, Luxembourg, Poland and Slovenia, and stability in the remaining countries.

There were 46.2 million unemployed persons in OECD countries in December 2010, down 0.9 million from December 2009 but 15.1 million higher than in December 2007.

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