THE OECD unemployment rate was stable at 5.3% in January 2019 but the number of unemployed increased for the fourth straight month (to 34 million), as more people entered the labour force.

The unemployment rate in January was stable (at 7.8%) in the euro area, with increases of 0.2 percentage point or more in Austria, Latvia and Lithuania. By contrast, the unemployment rate continued to decline, albeit from a relatively high level, in Spain (by 0.2 percentage point, to 14.1%).

Elsewhere, the unemployment rate rose by 0.6 percentage point in Korea (to 4.4%), by 0.2 percentage point in Canada (to 5.8%) and by 0.1 percentage point in Japan (to 2.5%) and the United States (to 4.0%), while it fell by 0.2 percentage point in Mexico (to 3.4%). More recent data show that in February, the unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point in the United States (to 3.8%), while it was stable in Canada (at 5.8%).

In January, the unemployment rate for women (up 0.1 percentage point, to 5.5%) was 0.3 percentage point higher than that for men (unchanged at 5.2%) in the OECD area and 0.7 percentage point higher than that for men in the euro area. In the United States however, relative to men, the women unemployment rate was 0.2 percentage point lower, while in Japan, there was no gender gap.

The OECD unemployment rate for youth (people aged 15 to 24) rose by 0.1 percentage point to 11.3% in January, following an increase of 0.2 percentage point in December.