Publication - OECD Employment Outlook 2016 - Key findings for the United States
© 2016 Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development
RECENT LABOUR MARKET TRENDS AND PROSPECTS
OECD labour market conditions continue to improve and the OECD average employment rate is projected to return to its pre-crisis level in 2017, nearly ten years after the global financial crisis erupted.
The US is an exception to the general OECD trend in that employment as a share of the population aged 15-74 remains 3 percentage-points below its pre-crisis value in 2007. This reflects the fact that the participation rate has not bounced back following a sharp fall during the Great Recession, whereas participation rates are now above their pre-crisis level in the majority of OECD countries.
The picture is sharply different when the recovery is assessed in terms of unemployment: the US unemployment rate, at 4.7% in May, has returned to its pre-crisis level, whereas the OECD average unemployment rate of 6.5% is still almost one percentage point above its level in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Long-term unemployment (of one year or longer) has also come down sharply in recent years in the United States, after reaching a historical high of nearly one in three unemployed persons in 2009. Nonetheless, 18% of the unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2015 had been out of work for at least a year, as compared to a little under 10% in 2007.
Wages had been stagnant in the United States until late 2014 when they accelerated somewhat. Overall, the cumulative increase in real hourly wages between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2015 was slightly over 6% in the United States, similar to the OECD average. This represents a continuation of sluggish wage growth that pre-dates the recent crisis in the United States, whereas it represented a sharp deceleration in a number of other OECD countries. This was particularly notable in the United Kingdom, where wages at the end of 2015 were 26% below the level they would have been had they continued to grow as rapidly as they did during 2000-2007.
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