The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development unemployment rate was stable for the second consecutive month, at 6.3%, in July 2016, 1.8% below the January 2013 8.1% peak.

Within the euro area, the unemployment rate fell the most in Spain (down 0.3% to 19.6%) compared to the previous month. This was followed by Italy (down 0.2% to 11.4%). In France, the unemployment rate increased by 0.2% to 10.3%.

Across the OECD area, 39.1 million people were unemployed, 9.9 million less than in January 2013, but still 6.4 million more than in April 2008, before the crisis started affecting the labour market.

Outside of Europe, the unemployment rate in July decreased by 0.1% Japan (to 3.0%) and Mexico (to 3.8%), while it was stable in the United States (at 4.9%), and rose by 0.1% in Canada (to 6.9%). More recent data show that in August, the unemployment rate remained at the same level in the United States while it continued to increase in Canada (by 0.1 percentage point to 7.0%).

The broad stability in unemployment rates observed for the OECD as a whole holds across all the main population groups. The OECD unemployment rate for men (stable at 6.2%) remained lower than the rate for women (down 0.1 percentage point, to 6.4%), while that for youth (people aged 15 to 24), at 13.1% (up 0.1%), was still more than twice the overall unemployment rate.