The unemployment rate ticked up in July, according to the latest data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The Paris-based OECD reports that the unemployment rate increased slightly to 8.0% in July, compared with 7.9% in the previous month. Unemployment remained stable in the Euro area at 11.3%, it says, noting that this follows 13 months of continuous rises. For the U.S. and Canada, the rates are reported for August, with the unemployment rate falling 0.2 percentage points to 8.1% in the U.S., and remaining stable in Canada at 7.3%.
Differences in unemployment rates across OECD countries remain large, it notes. The unemployment rate was highest in Spain, coming in at 25.1%, up 0.2 percentage points compared to last month, followed by Portugal at 15.7%, and Ireland rising 0.1 percentage points to 14.9%. By contrast, unemployment rates remained below 5.5% in Australia, Austria, Germany, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico and the Netherlands.
The OECD says that young people continue to bear the brunt of the current jobs crisis, with 16.1% unemployed in July 2012 (down 0.1 percentage points) in the OECD area overall, and at 22.6% (up 0.1 percentage points) in the euro area.
In July, there were 47.9 million people unemployed in the OECD area, which is up by 13.1 million from July 2008. Of these, 11.9 million were youths.