THE Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Monday said the share of their working-age population with jobs rose by 1.9 percentage points in the third quarter of 2020 but remained below pre-pandemic levels.

The OECD area employment rate rose to 66.7%, following a fall of 4.4 percentage points in the second quarter of 2020 due to the COVID - 19 containment measures, an official statement said.

"The latest rate thus remains 2.5 percentage points below the rate observed in the first quarter of 2020," it added.

The organisation however warned that a large part of the increase in the third quarter reflects returning furloughed workers in Canada and the United States, where they were previously recorded as unemployed. In most other countries, furloughed workers are recorded as employed.

"Indeed, the sharp increase in the number of furloughed workers in the second quarter of 2020 had largely contributed to the fall in the employment observed in these two countries," the OECD emphasised.

Subsequently, employment rates rose strongly in the third quarter - by 5.7 percentage points to 70.4% in Canada, and by 4 percentage points to 66.4% in the US, and continued to increase, albeit at a slower pace, in the fourth quarter.

In the Euro area, the employment rate increased to 66.8% in the third quarter from 66.3% in the second quarter, but remained 1.3 percentage points below its level of the first quarter. Compared to the second quarter, increases of more than 1 percentage point were registered in Austria (72.7%), Ireland (67.8%), and Spain (60.7%).

Among other countries, the highest quarterly increases in the employment rate were observed in Colombia where it was up by 5.7 percentage points, to 56.2%, and Turkey where it was up by 2.4 percentage points to 47.8%.

While the employment rate increased in a majority of OECD countries, it remained stable in Japan at 77.1%, and declined in the United Kingdom to 74.2% from 74.8%.