Across the OECD area, 36.2m people were unemployed in July.  

The country with the highest unemployment was Spain - 17.1% - while Iceland had the lowest rate of 2.0%. 

Greece reported a 21.7% unemployment rate in May, the figures showed.

In the euro area, the employment rate saw the largest decline in Latvia, down 0.4 percentage point to 8.5%, and the Slovak Republic, down 0.3 percentage point to 7.3%.

In France, the rate increased by 0.2 points to 9.8% and by 0.1 percentage point in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Italy and Luxembourg.

The youth unemployment rate remained above 30% in Greece at 44.4% in May, Spain at 38.6% and Italy 35.5%.

But the youth unemployment rate fell slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 5.7% across the OECD area, with large declines in Latvia, the Slovak Republic, Canada and Korea.

The OECD unemployment rate for women was slightly higher than for men, with a decline of 0.1 percentage point to 5.9%.