The unemployment rate for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries remained stable at 5.2% in October 2019 when compared to the previous month.

Across the OECD area, approximately 33.2 million people were unemployed during October 2019, up from 33.1 million in September.

Outside Europe, the unemployment rate increased in October by 0.1% in Australia (to 5.3%), Korea (to 3.5%) and the US (to 3.6%).  The unemployment rate was stable in Canada (at 5.5%), Japan (at 2.4%) and Mexico (at 3.6%), while it declined by 0.2% in Israel (to 3.4%). 

More recent data show that in November, the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point in the United States (to 3.5%), while it increased by 0.4 percentage point in Canada (to 5.9%).

In the euro area, the unemployment rate declined by 0.1% in October, to 7.5%.  Unemployment rates were broadly stable in the majority of countries, but fell by 0.2% in Italy, to 9.7% (following an increase of 0.3% in the previous month), and Lithuania, to 6.4%.

In October, the OECD unemployment rate was also broadly stable across the main population groups. The OECD unemployment rate for youth (people aged 15 to 24) was unchanged at 11.4%, remaining 7% higher than the rate for those aged 25 and above (stable at 4.4%). The difference between OECD unemployment rates for women and men (at 5.2% and 5.1%) was also stable.