The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported Wednesday that the unemployment rate in the OECD area remained stable at 8.0% in November, unchanged from the previous month.
However, the Paris-based group says that headline stability masks divergent underlying trends. In November, the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points in Canada, and by 0.1 points in the United States and Japan. And, more recent data for December shows that the jobless rate continued to fall in Canada (by another 0.1 percentage points), while it was stable in the U.S..
At the same time, the unemployment rate hit a new record high in the euro area, up 0.1 percentage points to 11.8% in November, the OECD reports.
The OECD also notes that youth unemployment is now 1.0 percentage points below its peak, but remains 3.3 points above its pre-crisis level, and is about twice as high (at 16.3%) as the rate for the working age population as a whole.
Overall, there were 48.2 million people unemployed in the OECD area in November, unchanged from October, and 13.5 million more than before the financial crisis in July 2008.