THE OECD area unemployment rate fell to 6.2% in July 2021, from 6.4% in June, 0.9 percentage point above the pre-pandemic rate observed in February 2020. Some care is needed in interpreting the fall in the OECD area unemployment rate compared to the April 2020 peak, as it largely reflects the return of temporary laid-off workers in the United States and Canada, where they are recorded as unemployed.[2] The number of unemployed workers across the OECD area fell by 1.6 million in July 2021, reaching 41.1 million.

In the euro area, the unemployment rate declined to 7.6% in July 2021, from 7.8% in June, the third consecutive monthly fall. Declines were observed in almost every euro area country, the largest being in Spain, where it fell by 0.7 percentage point, to 14.3 %. 

Outside Europe, decreases of 0.3 percentage point or more were registered in July 2021 in Australia (to 4.6%), Canada (to 7.5%), Colombia (to 13.7%), Korea (to 3.3%) and the United States (to 5.4%). The unemployment rate showed little change in Israel (at 5.0%), Japan (at 2.8%) and Mexico (at 4.2%). More recent data show that the unemployment rate further decreased in August 2021 in the United States, to 5.2%, although the share in labour force of unemployed people on temporary lay-off was broadly stable.