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OECD employment rate at 64.9% in first quarter 2012, remains 1.6 percentage points below its pre-crisis level

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12/07/2012 - The OECD area employment rate - defined as the proportion of people of working age (those aged 15 to 64) who are employed - was 64.9% in the first quarter of 2012. This figure is 1.6 percentage points lower than the 66.5% recorded in the second quarter of 2008, the quarter preceding the start of the global financial crisis.

There were 528 million persons employed in the OECD area in the first quarter of 2012, 2 million below the level observed in the second quarter of 2008, 234 million women and 295 million men. For the same period and age group (15-64), there were 47 million persons unemployed and 241 million person neither employed nor unemployed (for instance those in education), giving a total working age population of 815 million in the OECD area.