The unemployment rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries continues to decline.

The latest data for November 2020 showed the movement in the unemployment graph continuing south, as the rate declined from 7.1% in October 2020 to 6.9% in November 2020 but remained 1.7 percentage points above the level observed in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the labour market.

The OECD is a 60-year-old international organisation of member states, mostly developed countries that works to build better policies for better lives. The data, which was released by the OECD headquarters in Paris, showed that unemployment continued to decline faster among women to 7.0% in November 2020 coming from 7.2% in October 2020 than among men.

For males, the movement was 6.8% in November 2020, coming from 6.9% last October. Similar declines were observed for the youth (aged 15 to 24) to 14.3% in November coming from 14.4% the month before last October and for people aged 25 and above the movement was 6.0% in November coming from 6.1% in October.

Some 45.5 million persons were unemployed in the OECD area, 10.7 million more than in February.

Care is needed in interpreting data

OECD researchers report that some care is needed in interpreting the fall in the OECD area for unemployment compared to the April peak, as this largely reflects the return of temporary laid-off workers in the United States and Canada, where they are recorded as unemployed. In November, the unemployment rate in the Euro area decreased to 8.3% in November from 8.4% in October, but remained 1.1 percentage points above its February level.

Declines of 0.3 percentage point or more were observed in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal, while increases of 0.2 percentage point or more were registered in France, Ireland and Spain. In the United States, where the number of people on temporary lay-off declined at a slower pace in November than in previous months while in Canada, the unemployment rate in November fell by 0.2 and 0.4 percentage point respectively, to 6.7% and 8.5%.

In both countries the unemployment rate was about three percentage points higher than in February.

Findings of most recent data

The most recent data for December showed that the unemployment rate was stable in the United States (at 6.7%), but increased marginally in Canada (to 8.6%). The November unemployment rate decreased in Japan to 2.9% (from 3.1% in October), remaining higher than in February by 0.5 percentage point.

It fell to 15.5% in Colombia (from 16.3% in October), which is 4.6 percentage points above its level of February. Marginal declines were observed in Mexico (to 4.5%) and Korea (to 4.1%). The researchers noted that unemployment statistics do not account for the full amount of labour market slack, due to COVID-19, as some non-employed persons may be classified as “out of the labour force” because, due to the pandemic, they are either not able to actively look for a job or are not available to work.