OECD employment rate increases slightly in the third quarter of 2019

The OECD area employment rate – the share of the working-age population with jobs – increased to 68.9% in the third quarter of 2019, from 68.7% in the previous quarter.

Compared to the previous quarter, the employment rate in the third quarter of 2019 was stable in the euro area (at 67.9%, following continuous increases since the fourth quarter of 2013). Within the euro area, the employment rate increased by more than 0.5 percentage point in Estonia (to 75.7%), Latvia (to 72.7%) and Portugal (to 70.8%) but declined by 0.3 percentage point or more in France (to 65.2%), Luxembourg (to 67.9%) and Slovenia (to 71.5%).

Outside the euro area, the employment rate rose by 0.3 percentage point or more in Chile (to 62.7%), Denmark (to 75.1%), Japan (to 77.9%), Norway (to 75.7%), Poland (to 68.4%) and the United States (to 71.5%), but it fell by 1.7 percentage points in Iceland (to 82.7%).

The OECD area employment rate increased in the third quarter of 2019 compared to the previous quarter for both women (to 61.7%, from 61.5%) and men (to 76.2%, from 76.0%). Over the last year, the gap between male and female employment rates narrowed by 0.5 percentage point (to 14.5 percentage points). The gap narrowed more rapidly in Japan, and also in Korea and Mexico (where the employment rates for men fell over the year).