The employment rate of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries was 65.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous quarter and 0.2 percentage points higher than the fourth quarter in the previous year. The employment rate in the fourth quarter last year was 1.4 percentage points lower than the 66.5 percent recorded in the second quarter of 2008, the quarter preceding the start of the global financial crisis.
In 2012, the euro area employment rate was at 63.6 percent, down 0.5 percentage points year on year. In the fourth quarter, euro area unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points compared to the previous quarter. In 2012, the employment rate rose by 0.5 percentage points in the United States to 67.3 percent, while it rose in Japan by 0.3 percentage points to 70.9 percent and in Canada by 0.6 percentage points to 72.5 percent, as compared to the previous year.