The employment rate of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries was 65.1 percent in the first quarter of 2013, stable compared to the previous quarter and 0.2 percentage points higher than the first quarter in the previous year. The employment rate in the first quarter this 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 the first quarter, the employment rate was stable in the United States at 67.3 percent, in Canada at 72.5 percent and in Germany at 73.1 percent, while it rose in Japan by 0.3 percentage points to 71.2 percent, all compared to the previous quarter. The employment rate fell in Italy by 0.4 percentage points quarter on quarter to 56.1 percent, declining for the fourth straight quarter, and fell in the United Kingdom by 0.2 percentage points to 70.4 percent.
According to the OECD, among other European Union countries the highest quarter-on-quarter falls in employment rate were seen in Slovenia by 0.8 percentage points, in Greece by 0.7 percentage points (declining for the 14th consecutive quarter), in Luxembourg by 0.5 percentage points and in Portugal by 0.4 percentage points (decreasing for the ninth consecutive quarter). The employment rate also continued to fall in Spain, though the country saw its slowest rate of decline since the second quarter of 2011.
In the first quarter of 2013, the employment rate was above pre-crisis levels in 10 of the OECD countries, including Chile, Germany, Japan, Korea and Turkey. By contrast, it was more than three percentage points below pre-crisis levels in eight of the countries, including Spain and the United States.