The employment rate of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries was 65 percent in the third quarter of 2012, unchanged compared to the previous quarter and 0.2 percentage points higher than the third quarter in the previous year. The employment rate was 1.5 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 the third quarter of 2012, the euro area employment rate was at 63.8 percent, also unchanged from the previous quarter but 0.4 percentage points lower than the same quarter in the previous year. In the third quarter, the employment rate was stable quarter-on-quarter in the United States at 67.1 percent, after having increased for four consecutive quarters, while it rose in Japan by 0.3 percentage points from the second quarter of 2012 to 70.7 percent after two quarters of stability. In contrast, in the third quarter the employment rate in Canada fell by 0.2 percentage points compared to the previous quarter to 72.1 percent after two consecutive quarters of increase on quarter-on-quarter basis.