High income OECD countries Compared by Labor > Unemployment > Unemployment rates > Unemployment rates > Total per million

DEFINITION: Unemployed persons are defined as those who report that they are without work, that they are available for work and that they have taken active steps to find work in the last four weeks. The ILO Guidelines specify what actions count as active steps to find work and these include answering vacancy notices, visiting factories, construction sites and other places of work, and placing advertisements in the press as well as registering with labour offices.

The unemployment rate is defined as the number of unemployed persons as a percentage of the labour force, where the latter consists of the unemployed plus those in employment, which are defined as persons who have worked for one hour or more in the last week.

When unemployment is high, some persons become discouraged and stop looking for work. They are then excluded from the labour force so that the unemployment rate may fall, or stop rising, even though there has been no underlying improvement in the labour market. Figures expressed per million population for the same year.

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#	COUNTRY	AMOUNT	DATE
1	Luxembourg	8.44%	2009
2	Iceland	7.22%	2009
3	Slovakia	2.05%	2009
4	Finland	1.29%	2009
5	Ireland	1.05%	2009
6	New Zealand	0.834%	2009
7	Portugal	0.762%	2009
8	Greece	0.736%	2009
9	Belgium	0.695%	2009
10	Denmark	0.688%	2009
11	Sweden	0.667%	2009
12	Norway	0.538%	2009
13	Austria	0.526%	2009
14	Czech Republic	0.505%	2009
15	Switzerland	0.465%	2009
16	Poland	0.252%	2009
17	Australia	0.202%	2009
18	Netherlands	0.194%	2009
19	Spain	0.181%	2009
20	Canada	0.178%	2009
21	France	0.128%	2009
22	Italy	0.103%	2009
23	Germany	0.103%	2009
24	United Kingdom	0.0857%	2009
25	South Korea	0.0651%	2009
26	Japan	0.0306%	2009
27	United States	0.015%	2009

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