The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said Tuesday that the unemployment rate for the OECD remained stable at 8.2% in January.
There are about 44.8million people who are considered unemployed across the OECD area, which is down 0.3million from January 2011, but still 13.8million higher than in January 2008.
New data for February 2012 show that the unemployment rate for the United States was stable at 8.3% (following five consecutive monthly declines) while it fell by 0.2 percentage point in Canada (to 7.4%), the OECD notes.
In the euro area, the unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point to 10.7% in January, a record high since the start of the global financial crisis, the Paris-based OECD says. Within the Euro area, the unemployment rates fell in Austria and the Slovak Republic, remained stable in Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, and Slovenia, while they rose in all other Euro area countries, it notes. The rate for Germany rose slightly to 5.8%, marking an end to the continued decline seen since April 2005. And, in Spain the rate now stands at 23.3%, the highest unemployment rate in the OECD area.
Among non-European OECD countries, the unemployment rate fell slightly in Australia and Mexico, while it increased slightly in Japan and Korea.