The International Labour Organisation (ILO) considers people of working age to be in one (and one only) of three situations in the labour market: employed, unemployed, or inactive. The employed and unemployed together are known as the labour force.
Read moreA closely watched indicator is the unemployment rate (the number of unemployed as a percentage of the labour force). The unemployment rate tracks what economists call “labour slack” – the match between the jobs on offer in an economy and the number of people seeking to work – and is a key indicator of a society’s economic and social well-being.
Read moreLabour force data are typically analysed by gender, age group (youth, prime age, older). They are also frequently broken down in many other ways for specific policy purposes: by economic sector, by occupation, by level of education, full- and part-time workers, the short- and long-term unemployed.
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Unemployment rate in the OECD stabilises at 4.9% in July 2022 |
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(1) For Costa Rica, Chile, and Türkiye change between February 2020 and June 2022; for the United Kingdom, change between February 2020 and May 2022; for New Zealand change between fourth quarter 2019 and second quarter 2022 and Switzerland change between fourth quarter 2019 and first quarter 2022. |
9 Sep 2022 – The OECD unemployment rate stabilised at 4.9% in July 2022, 0.4 points below its pre-pandemic level recorded in February 2020, and reached its lowest level since the start of the series in 2001. The number of unemployed workers in the OECD continued to fall in July and reached 33.0 million, 2.4 million less than before the pandemic. For the OECD as a whole, both men and women, as well as workers aged 15-24 and 25 and over, have lower unemployment rates than in February 2020. Looking at individual countries however, the unemployment rate in July remains higher than before the pandemic in one fifth of OECD countries. |
Behind the numbers
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Further statistics on the labour market |
Related labour topics |