In a remarkable demonstration of economic resilience, the unemployment rate among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) remained steady at 4.8% in July 2023. This marks the month in a row that the rate has stayed below the threshold of 5% according to recent data.
Although the rate increased in 15 OECD countries, including Denmark, Lithuania and Austria it remained unchanged in nine others. Decreased in another nine. It is worth noting that unemployment rates reached record lows or were close to them in five countries, such as Germany and the United States.
The total number of individuals across OECD nations experienced a slight rise to reach 32.9 million in July. However, this figure remains close to the point recorded back in April 2023.
The youth unemployment rate, which encompasses workers aged between 15 and 24 years old saw a minor increase to reach 10.5% in July compared to June’s rate of 10.3%. This upward trend was observed across fourteen OECD countries with Finland, Austria, Denmark, Israel, Mexico and the United States experiencing substantial increases.
Conversely, there was little change observed in unemployment rates, for both genders and workers aged 25 years old and above. In this context, both the European Union and the euro area managed to keep their unemployment rates at historically low levels with rates of 5.9% and 6.4% respectively. Except for Greece, Slovenia, Belgium, Ireland and Spain, all countries in the euro area experienced either increasing rates.
Despite these trends, there are still noticeable differences among countries like Estonia, Greece, Luxembourg, and Spain as some continue to struggle with unemployment rates that remain significantly higher, than their lowest recorded levels.
In countries outside of Europe, we noticed a rise in unemployment rates in Mexico, Australia, Japan, Korea and Canada. However, Türkiye, Israel and the United States went against the trend. Experienced a decrease in their unemployment rates.
Based on the information Canada’s unemployment rate stayed steady at 5.0% during August. On the other hand, the United States witnessed an uptick in their unemployment rate from 3.5% in July to 3.8%, in August 2023.
