OECD Data: compare rich economies on jobs, prices and productivity

The site: OECD Data. Cost: Free. Useful for: culture and countries.

What it is

The OECD is an organisation of 38 member countries, most of them high-income economies, that publishes comparable statistics on its members and many partner countries. Its data pages gather its outputs, from indicators to interactive tools, dashboards and statistical releases, across areas such as GDP, inflation, employment, education, health, innovation and climate change.

The main tool behind the pages is the OECD Data Explorer. The OECD describes it as a single platform for data discovery, customisation, visualisation and reuse. It lets you search for data, preview a dataset, download it in several formats, share it and connect to it through an API.

Use it for

• Comparing labour costs, productivity or tax levels across developed markets
• Finding consistent definitions when national statistics do not line up
• Topic deep dives such as health spending or student performance (PISA)
• Building charts for a report on a country’s position among its peers

Its main strength is comparability. The OECD works with member governments on common definitions, so a figure for one country is usually built the same way as the figure for another.

How to use it

1. Start at oecd.org/en/data and choose a topic, a country or a featured indicator.
2. Open the Data Explorer and search for a dataset by keyword.
3. Preview the dataset and narrow it to the countries, years and measures you need.
4. Download the result in the format that suits you, or share a link to the same view.
5. If you repeat the same pull often, use the API so the figures can be refreshed.

Read the dataset notes before you download. Units, base years and definitions vary between datasets, and that is where most comparison mistakes come from.

Example

A founder comparing Germany, the Netherlands and Poland as a base for a European team can look up OECD wage and employment data in the Data Explorer. Narrowing it to those three countries and the last ten years gives one comparable table, which is easier to defend than three national sources with different definitions.

Watch out for

• Coverage is strongest for member countries; many emerging markets are missing or patchy.
• Each dataset has its own definitions and units, so read the notes before comparing.
• The Data Explorer has many options and takes a little practice.

It works well alongside World Bank Open Data, IMF DataMapper and Our World in Data.