By TIOL News Service

PARIS, JULY 17, 2017: THE OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age in employment – has increased by 0.2 percentage point in the first quarter of 2017, to 67.4%. In the same period, the OECD labour force participation rate increased by 0.1 percentage point, to 71.8%.

Employment rates rose in most OECD countries, with Estonia (up 1.7 percentage points, to 73.8%) and Slovenia (up 1.4 percentage points, to 68.1%) registering the highest increases. Among larger OECD economies, employment rates increased by 0.4 percentage point in Canada (to 73.3%) and Mexico (to 61.4%), by 0.3 percentage point in Japan (to 75.0%), Turkey (to 50.9%) and the United States (to 69.8%), and by 0.2 percentage point in Korea (to 66.5%), the United Kingdom (to 73.9%) and the euro area (to 65.9%).

Compared to the first quarter of 2016, the OECD employment rate increased for all age groups. Older workers (ages 55-64) saw the highest increase over the year (up 1.1 percentage points, to 59.9%) with more moderate increases for youth (ages 15-24, up 0.5 percentage point, to 41.1%) and prime-age workers (ages 25-54, up 0.5 percentage point, to 77.5%). In the United States however, the increase in the youth employment rate (up 0.8 percentage point) outpaced that for older workers (up 0.3 percentage point).