The Covid-19 pandemic is turning into a jobs crisis that is far worse than the 2008 crisis. Women, young people and low income earners are being hit the hardest, according to OECD Employment Outlook 2020. The OECD unemployment rate edged down to 8.4% in May 2020, after soaring by 3 percentage points in April. In February it stood at 5.2%.

Unemployment has soared in the OECD area since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Policymakers have taken action to safeguard workers and firms, but as the coronavirus crisis continues, more targeted action will be needed to stop the jobs crisis from becoming a social crisis. Watch our video.

Support policies by some 54 OECD, EU and emerging countries provided on average USD 536 billion (EUR 469 billion) per year of direct support to farmers in 2017-2019. Such policies can harm consumers, especially poor ones, and widen income gaps between small and large farms, according to the latest Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation.

More progress has been made in the fight against offshore tax evasion, latest data show. Nearly 100 countries carried out automatic exchange of information in 2019, enabling their tax authorities to obtain data on 84 million financial accounts held offshore by their residents, covering total assets of EUR 10 trillion, sharply up on 2018.

Blog: As the coronavirus crisis unfolds, millions of workers worldwide wonder what the future holds for them. New OECD work shows that some groups of workers face a higher risk than others of being left behind and experience poverty associated with COVID-19 labour market disruptions.