Employment Outlook 2009 Country Notes: United Kingdom

a recent publication from the OECD

Abstract


The recession is slowing or even ending in the United Kingdom as well as in other OECD countries. This being said, the average unemployment rate for the OECD area reached a post-war high of 8.5% in July and may approach 10% in the coming months.

Unemployment has risen about as sharply in the United Kingdom as it has in the OECD area as a whole. The 2.6 percentage-point increase in the UK unemployment rate between December 2007 and the second quarter of 2009 is nearly identical to the average rise for the OECD area (Figure 1). The recent upsurge in unemployment has been much sharper in several other countries where the banking and housing sectors also suffered strong reversals, in particular Spain, Ireland and the United States. By contrast, the rise in unemployment has been modest in a number of European countries, including large economies such as Germany and Italy.

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