Estonia, Ireland and Spain had the largest increases in unemployment (ranging from 10 to 15 percentage points) and the latter two have yet to see any labour market recovery, raising concerns that the currently very high unemployment rates could persist a long time.6 Although not as hard hit, the unemployment rates in Greece, Iceland, the Slovak Republic and the United States rose by more than 5 percentage points during the “Great Recession”, but have begun to ease in recent quarters except in the case of Greece. By contrast, a number of countries experienced only small increases in unemployment. Germany, in particular, saw a rise of only one-half a percentage point before unemployment resumed a declining trend that was evident before the recession, while five other countries saw increases of less than 1.5 percentage points.