How does Mexico’s unemployment rate compare to that of other countries?

In a recent post, we looked at The pattern of unemployment in Mexico in 2013 and saw how states in northern Mexico have significantly higher unemployment rates than most of southern Mexico. In this post we consider international comparisons. How does the rate of unemployment in Mexico compare to the rates in other countries?

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) publishes harmonised unemployment rates for its 31 member countries. The OECD calculates Mexico’s harmonised unemployment rate for the third quarter of 2013 at 4.9%. This is quite encouraging, since the average for OECD countries is 7.9%. (Note that these figures do not include “underemployment”.) Mexico’s unemployment rate is more favorable than that of its NAFTA partners, Canada (currently 7.1%) and the USA (7.6%).

The OECD members with the highest unemployment rates are Greece (27.4%), Spain (26.6%),, Portugal (16.4%), the Slovak Republic (14.0%) and Ireland (13.8%).

Among OECD members, only South Korea (3.1%)  Japan (4.0%) and Austria (4.1%) have a lower harmonised unemployment rate than Mexico.