See what a high band reads like.

P1The bar chart illustrates the unemployment rate as a percentage of the labour force in six countries in 2021.

P2Overall, South Africa had by far the highest unemployment rate, while Japan recorded the lowest. The chart shows a wide range across the six countries, with a particularly large gap between the top two and the remaining four nations.

P3South Africa's unemployment rate stood at 33.6% of the labour force, more than twice Spain's figure of 14.8%, which was the second-highest. Brazil came third at 13.2%, meaning that the top three countries all had double-digit unemployment, whereas France, the USA, and Japan did not.

P4France's rate was 7.9%, followed by the USA at 5.4% and Japan at 2.8%. Japan's figure was approximately 12 times lower than South Africa's and around five times lower than France's, highlighting the considerable variation within the group. The gap between South Africa at 33.6% and Japan at 2.8% amounted to 30.8 percentage points, representing the most striking feature of the chart. Spain and Brazil were broadly comparable despite a difference of 1.6 percentage points, while France, the USA, and Japan all occupied a lower range between roughly 3% and 8%.