r=revised

NOTE: Data are on a civilian labor force basis. Foreign country data are adjusted to U.S. concepts. Although the U.S. lower age limit is 16 years, the age limit for other countries varies from 15 to 16 years. No adjustment is made for the treatment of layoffs. For some countries, no adjustment is made for the treatment of unpaid family workers, persons waiting to start a new job, and passive job seekers (for example, persons only reading newspaper ads as their method of job search). In the United States, job search must be "active," such as placing or answering advertisements, and simply reading ads is not enough to qualify as active search. These unadjusted differences have a negligible effect on the comparisons. For further information on comparability issues, see Constance Sorrentino, "International unemployment rates: how comparable are they?" Monthly Labor Review, June 2000, pp. 3-20, at www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/06/art1full.pdf.

For further qualifications and historical data, see "International Comparisons of Annual Labor Force Statistics, Adjusted to U.S. Concepts, 10 countries, 1970-2008," October 1, 2009, at www.bls.gov/ilc/flscomparelf.htm.

Data used to calculate unemployment rates come mainly from national statistical sources but also from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT).

r=revised

NOTE: Data exclude conscripts but include career military living in private households. BLS does not adjust these data to reflect U.S. concepts. These data are prepared by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT) according to the International Labor Office (ILO) definitions and are called harmonized unemployment rates. For details on methods and concepts, see "European Union labor force survey, methods and concepts, 2001," at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-BF-03-002/EN/KS-BF-03-002-EN.PDF. Data are reproduced with permission from EUROSTAT.

NOTE: Indexes are calculated using employment levels underlying the unemployment rates adjusted to U.S. concepts in Table 1 (see Table 1 notes). Data are on a civilian labor force basis and mainly from household surveys. Household surveys provide greater comparability of labor market trends across countries than establishment surveys, although both types of surveys are used to measure employment. In the United States, the establishment survey provides a highly reliable gauge of monthly change in nonfarm payroll employment while the household survey provides a broader picture of employment including agriculture and the self-employed. For details on the differences between the two U.S. surveys, see www.bls.gov/web/ces_cps_trends.pdf. Note that trends shown in this table are for the number of persons in employment and not the number of jobs.