In the euro area, the unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point, to 11.4%, with the largest falls recorded in Ireland (by 0.2 percentage point, to 10.5%) and Italy (by 0.4 percentage point, to 12.9%).
In December, the unemployment rate also fell in Japan (by 0.1 percentage point, to 3.4%), in Mexico (by 0.4 percentage points, to 4.3%) and in the United States (by 0.2 percentage point, to 5.6%), while it was stable in Canada (at 6.7%) and increased in Korea (by 0.1 percentage point to 3.5%). More recent data referring to January 2015 show that the unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage point in Canada (to 6.6%) while it increased by 0.1 percentage point in the United States (to 5.7%).
The OECD youth unemployment rate (among 15-24 year-olds) fell by 0.3 percentage point, to 14.6% in December. This is 2.7 percentage points below the peak recorded in October 2009. Youth unemployment remained exceptionally high in several euro area countries such as Greece (50.6% in October, the latest month available), Italy (42.0%), Portugal (34.5%) and Spain (51.4%). The OECD unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage point for both women (to 7.1%) and men (to 7.0%).
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