In October 2010, the OECD area unemployment rate was 8.6%, up 0.1 percentage point from September. The OECD-wide rate has been stable at 8.5%-8.6% since June 2010, but new November 2010 data confirms diverging trends at the national level. The unemployment rate for the United States was up 0.2 percentage point at 9.8%, while the rate for Canada was down by 0.3 percentage point to 7.6%.

Selected Unemployment Rates, s.a.
September 2010 - October 2010 (1)


(1) United Kingdom: July 2010 - August 2010

Germany‘s unemployment rate, though unchanged in October at 6.7%, has been declining steadily and is lower than the 8.4% rate reported in 2007. Unemployment rates in Korea (3.6%), the Netherlands (4.4%) and Austria (4.8%) remain comparatively low, while Spain (20.7%) the Slovak Republic (14.7%) and Ireland (14.1%) are experiencing persistently high unemployment rates.

The OECD area unemployment level remains close to post-war highs. There were 45.7 million unemployed persons in OECD countries in October 2010, down 0.8 million from October 2009 but 15.5 million higher than in October 2007.