In the last quarter of 2025, employment rates remained stable or broadly stable compared with the previous quarter in 18 of 36 OECD countries with available data. Employment rates fell in nine OECD countries and rose in the other nine. Türkiye continued to record the lowest employment rate among OECD countries, at 55.1% in Q4 2025, despite being at record-high levels. By contrast, employment rates have continuously exceeded 80% in Japan, since Q2 2025, and in the Netherlands, since Q3 2021 (Figure 1 and Table 1). Labour force participation among individuals aged 15 to 64 also remained stable in 18 OECD countries. Türkiye, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Italy recorded the lowest participation rates, all below 70% (Table 2).
Compared with the same period in 2024, employment rates in Q4 2025 increased in 14 OECD countries, decreased in 12, and remained stable in the remaining 10. The euro area employment rate rose by 0.3 percentage points (p.p.) over this period, supported by a rise in labour force participation. The largest year-on-year increases in employment rates were recorded in Colombia, Latvia, Portugal, and Greece (all over 1.0 p.p.). In France and Japan, rising employment rates were driven by increases in participation; however, in France, an increase in unemployment offset more than half of the gain. Conversely, employment rates declined by more than 1.0 p.p. in Luxembourg, mainly due to a decline in the participation rate (Figure 2).
In February 2026, the OECD unemployment rate remained stable at 5.0%, unchanged compared with the previous month and 0.2 p.p. above its record low from June 2023 (Table 3 and Figure 3). Unemployment rates in the European Union (5.9%), the euro area (6.2%), as well as in 19 OECD countries remained largely unchanged compared with January. However, unemployment rates increased in 11 countries and declined in only 3. The OECD unemployment rate among younger workers (aged 15-24) rose to 11.5%, widening the OECD unemployment rate gap between younger and prime-age and older workers (aged 25 and above) to 7.3 p.p. (Figure 4). By contrast, the unemployment rate remained broadly stable for women, men and prime-age and older workers (Tables 5 and 6). More timely estimates for March 2026 show that the unemployment rate remained stable in Canada at 6.7% and broadly stable in the United States at 4.3%.
Methodology
Release dates
- 22 May 2026
- All release dates
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