The unemployment rate across developed nations eased slightly in March, according to the latest data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The Paris-based OECD reports that the jobless rate for the OECD area decreased to 8.0% in March, compared with 8.1% in the previous month. However, the small decline masks diverging patterns across countries, it says.

Notably, the unemployment rate hit a new record high in the euro area, climbing to 12.1% in March. The rate also rose by 0.2 percentage points in Canada, to 7.2%. But, rates fell in the United States, Japan, and Korea. More recent data for Canada and the U.S. showed that rates continued to fall in the U.S. and stabilized in Canada, it adds.

The youth unemployment rate remained unchanged at 16.5% in March, the OECD says; noting that this is 0.8 percentage points below the peak reached in September 2009, but remains 3.5 points above its pre-crisis level. More than one in three young people are unemployed in Italy, Portugal and the Slovak Republic, and more than one in two are jobless in Greece and Spain, it says.

Overall, there were 48.3 million people unemployed in the OECD area in March, the group says, which is down by 400,000 from February, but is still 13.6 million more than in July 2008.