UK Sees Jobs Boost as OECD Lags Behind Pre-Crisis Levels

The UK employment rate has strengthen as the combined major world economies still lag behind their pre-economic crisis high, according to the OECD.

The OECD Quarterly Employment Situation for the second financial quarter of 2013 revealed that the employment rate jumped to 70.5%, up from 70.4% on the previous quarter.

It also found that the employment rate across the OECD, including the UK, US, France and many other nations, hit 65.1% in Q2, up from 65% in Q1 but 1.4% below Q2 2008 - the quarter preceding the start of the global financial crisis.

The euro-area registered some unfavourable figures. Its employment rate fell in the Q2 2013 to 63.4%, down from 63.5% in Q1.

But the OECD argue that these findings mask divergent patterns across the major euro-area economies.

The employment rate in Italy, for instance, fell to 55.5% in Q2 and rose in Germany to 73.3% over the same time period [Fig 1].

Further afield, France posted a stable score of 64% in Q2 and other major countries saw their employment rate increase, including Japan (71.5%), Canada (72.6%), among others.

Like France, the US maintained a stable employment rate of 67.3% in Q2, whereas Greece saw the sharpest drop across the OECD to 49.2% in Q2, down from 49.7% in Q1.

Greek Tradgey

However, the troubled country's youth employment rate (relating to 15 to 24 year olds) remained stable at 11.6%.

This is a positive sign following news from the Greek Statistical Authority Elstat that the young jobless rate shot up to 55.1% in July 2013, up from 54.9% in July 2012 and an increase from 42.6% in July 2011.

The body, a separate organisation to the OECD, also found that the total amount of Greek people in unemployment was 27.6% in July, a hike from 25 % in July 2012.

The total number of employed citizens during July 2013 was estimated at 3,610,549, according to Elstat.