The employment rate of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries was 66.1 percent in the first quarter of 2015, up 0.2 percentage points compared to the previous quarter and 0.9 percentage points higher than the first quarter of the previous year. The employment rate in the first quarter this year was only 0.6 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 increased by 0.1 percentage point in the United States to 67.3 percent and by the same margin in Germany to 74.0 percent, while in Canada the rate remained stable, all quarter on quarter. The employment rate in question rose in Italy by 0.2 percentage points to 56.0 percent and grew by 0.4 percentage points to 72.6 percent in the UK, both compared to the previous quarter. According to the OECD’s statement, other significant quarter-on-quarter increases were recorded in Iceland, up 1.9 percentage points to 84.1 percent, in Turkey, rising by 0.6 percentage points to 50.1 percent, in Mexico, up 0.5 percentage points to 60.7 percent, in Hungary with a rise of 0.5 percentage points to 63.0 percent, and in Japan with a slight increase of 0.1 percentage point to 73.0 percent.
Meanwhile, over the last four quarters, the rise in the male employment rate outpaced the rise in the female employment rate in the OECD as a whole but with significant differences across countries. For example, changes in the employment rate in South Korea, Mexico and Turkey were mainly driven by changes in the employment rate for women, while the increase in the employment rate in the US was mostly due to the increase in the employment rate for men.