THE unemployment rate in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries increased marginally by 0.1 per cent over a month to reach 6.6 per cent in April.

This marked the first monthly increase since the April, 2020 peak (at 8.8 per cent) and was also 1.3 per cent above the pre-pandemic month of February, 2020.

The number of unemployed workers across the OECD area rose by 700,000 in April, reaching 43.8 million in total, despite some recovery seen on the back of vaccination drives.

The OECD noted that some care is needed in interpreting the fall in the OECD area unemployment rate, as this largely reflects the return of temporary laid-off workers in the US and Canada, where they are recorded as unemployed.

In Europe, a marginal decline of the unemployment rate was recorded to 8 per cent, but it remained 0.7 per cent above its pre-pandemic level.

Outside Europe, the unemployment rate increased in several countries including by 1.2 per cent in Colombia (to 15 per cent), 0.6 per cent in Canada (to 8.1 per cent) and Mexico (to 4.9 per cent), 0.2 per cent in Japan (to 2.8 per cent) and 0.1 per cent in the US (to 6.1 per cent).

By contrast, the unemployment rate declined in Australia to 5.5 per cent and reached 3.7 per cent in Korea.

"More recent data show that the unemployment rate increased marginally in Canada to 8.2 per cent while it fell by 0.3 percentage point in the US to 5.8 per cent in May," the OECD said.

The OECD women’s unemployment rate was stable in April at 6.7 per cent, while that of men increased marginally to 6.5 per cent. As a consequence, the gap between these two rates has continued to narrow, to less than 0.2 percentage point, well below the peak reached in April, 2020 of 0.9 percentage point.