State members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recorded a flat unemployment rate at 8.5% in July, slightly down from the rate in May, the advisory agency said recently.

For OECD area as a whole, the July reading of unemployment is unchanged from the previous month, only slightly less than 8.6% recorded in May, the agency said.

The Euro area has maintained a 10% jobless rate for 5 months since March 2010, whereas the European Union has a stable rate at 9.6% through February-July period this year.

Country by country, most members recorded stable data in July. However, both Canada and the United States saw 0.1 percentage point rise in August as the jobless rate respectively increased to 8.1 and 9.6%.

In July, Spain recorded the highest rate at 20.3%, followed by Slovak Republic with 15% and Ireland with 13.6%. At the other end, the lowest rate of 3.7% was in Korea.

“The OECD unemployment rate remained at a level close to post- war highs,” the agency said. The number of jobless person reached 45.5M in July, an increase of 13.4M from a year earlier.

History says that revival of labor market always lags in the economic recovery. A OECD latest report said member countries need to create 15M jobs just to get employment levels back to where they were before the crisis hit.—Paul A. Ebeling, Jnr. www.livetradingnews.com

Posted by Shayne Heffernan on Sep 19th, 2010and filed underEquities, Europe, Latest News, Markets.You can follow any responses to this entry through theRSS 2.0You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site