The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCDE) noted that unemployment among its 34 member countries rose in January as joblessness in the Eurozone touched new record highs.

Specifically, the OECD unemployment rate increased to 8.1% in January 2013, compared with 8.0% in the previous month. In the Eurozone, the jobless rate hit a new record high at 11.9%.

The unemployment rate also rose by 0.1 percentage point in the US (to 7.9%), while it fell by 0.1 percentage point in Canada (to 7.0%) and in Japan (to 4.2%). More recent data referring to the month of February show that the unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points in the US (to 7.7%) while it was stable in Canada.

The OECD noted that "trends in unemployment rates have differed across population groups since the beginning of the financial and economic crisis". In January, the OECD unemployment rate for men (up 0.1 percentage point to 8.0%) was 0.9 percentage point below the peak of 8.9% reached in 2009. By contrast, the OECD unemployment rate for women was at its highest level (at 8.2% for the second consecutive month), having hovered around 8.0% since July 2009. In January 2013, the unemployment rates for men and women were respectively 2.1 and 2.2 percentage points above their pre-crisis level.

The OECD unemployment rate for youth (up 0.2 percentage point to 16.7%) was 0.6 percentage point below its peak, but remained 3.7 percentage points above its pre-crisis level and was more than twice as high as the rate for the working age population as a whole. The youth unemployment rate reached a peak of 24.2% in the euro area. In January 2013, more than one active youth in three were unemployed in Italy, Portugal and Slovak Republic, and more than one in two in Greece and Spain.

Overall, there were 48.8m people unemployed in the OECD area in January 2013, 0.5m more than in December 2012 and 14m more than in July 2008.

JM

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