The unemployment rate in January for the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s 36 member countries was stable at 5.3% in January 2019, according to the OECD’s “Harmonised Unemployment Rates” report released Tuesday. However, the number of unemployed people rose for the fourth straight month to 34 million as more entered the labour force.

OECD’s report uses a standard definition when measuring unemployment so that countries can more easily be compared. Countries can sometimes have differing definitions of how to measure unemployment.

In the euro area, the unemployment rate in January was stable at 7.8%, with increases of 0.2 percentage point or more in Austria, Latvia and Lithuania. On the other hand, the unemployment rate continued to decline in Spain, albeit from a relatively high level. Spain’s unemployment rate fell to 14.1% from 14.3% in December.

In Asia, Korea’s unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in January from 3.8% in December. Japan’s jobless rate also ticked up to 2.5% from 2.4% in December.

The US jobless rate rose to 4.0% in January from 3.9% in December. The jobless rate fell to 3.8% in February.

Canada’s jobless rate fell to 5.8% in January from 5.6% in December. It held steady in February at 5.8%.

In January, the unemployment rate for women (up 0.1 percentage point, to 5.5%) was 0.3 percentage point higher than that for men (unchanged at 5.2%) in the OECD area. In the US, however, relative to men, women’s unemployment rate was 0.2 percentage point lower. In Japan, there was no gender gap.