The OECD area unemployment rate was 8.2% in February 2012, and has remained broadly at this level since January 2011.
The euro area unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point (for the eighth consecutive month) to 10.8% in February, maintaining a record high since the start of the global financial crisis. Within the euro area, unemployment rates rose by 0.1 percentage point in Austria (to 4.2%) and Luxembourg (to 5.2%); by 0.2 percentage point in Italy (to 9.3%) and Portugal (to 15.0%); and by 0.3 percentage point in Spain (to 23.6%). They fell by 0.1 percentage point in Finland (to 7.4%) and the Netherlands (to 4.9%). Unemployment rates remained stable in all other euro area countries. The unemployment rate for Spain is the highest in the OECD area.
Elsewhere in the OECD area, unemployment rates remained broadly stable. The rate fell most in Hungary (to 11.0%, down from 11.7%) and rose most in Korea (to 3.7%, up from 3.2%). New data for March 2012 show the unemployment rate falling in both the United States (to 8.2%, down from 9.1% in August 2011) and Canada (to 7.2%, down from 7.4% in the previous month).
Around 45.0 million people were unemployed across the OECD area in February 2012, up 0.4 million from February 2011 (the first monthly year-on-year increase since May 2010) and still 14.3 million higher than in February 2008.