The employment rate of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries was up 0.2 percentage points quarter on quarter and rose by 0.6 percentage points year on year to 66.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015, just shy of its pre-crisis peak of the first quarter of 2008.
In the fourth quarter last year, employment rose by 0.1 percentage point in the euro area to 64.7 percent compared to the previous quarter, with the highest quarter-on-quarter increases observed in Spain with 0.6 percentage point growth to 58.6 percent, in the Slovak Republic with a 0.5 percentage point rise to 63.4 percent and in Greece with a 0.4 percentage point increase to 51.4 percent, all quarter on quarter.
In the given quarter, the employment rate increased by 0.6 percentage points in Mexico to 61.2 percent and by 0.5 percentage points in the United Kingdom to 73.2 percent, both on quarter-on-quarter basis. In the last quarter of 2015, the employment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point in Japan, South Korea and the United States to 73.6 percent, 66 percent and 68.9 percent respectively, while the employment rate in Turkey increased by 0.1 percentage point to 50.4 percent, all quarter on quarter. Over the same period, the employment rate fell by 0.1 percentage point in Canada to 72.4 percent.