The world has been watching and waiting for signs that the economic crisis is coming to an end. Unfortunately it's taking longer in some of the globe's richest and most socioeconomically generous nations. In these places unemployment continues to rise, with no clear signs of leveling off.
Recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a wealthy-country think tank, have shown that among the world's 30 richest nations, including the United States, Japan and Germany, it is European countries that have seen unemployment increase the most in the last year.
European officials may be tied up with the debt problems of Greece, but the more widespread and keenly felt problem across certain parts of Europe is that of everyday people having difficulty finding a job. Ireland's unemployment rate worsened the most dramatically over the last year. It stood at 13.8% in January, but that was a whopping 4.4-percentage-point increase from this time last year. Back in 2008 the jobless rate was at just 6.3%.
Second-worst is the Slovak Republic, where the rate of unemployment rose by 4 points to 13.7%. Spain still has the highest unemployment rate out of the advanced world--an eye-wateringly high 18.8% in January--and that's also marked a 3-point increase from January 2009.
{{/usCountry}}Second-worst is the Slovak Republic, where the rate of unemployment rose by 4 points to 13.7%. Spain still has the highest unemployment rate out of the advanced world--an eye-wateringly high 18.8% in January--and that's also marked a 3-point increase from January 2009.
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