This paper investigates the relevance of unemployment hysteresis in seventeen OECD countries. We employ an out-of-sample forecast exercise in which a mean-reverting autoregressive model is compared to an autoregressive model with an imposed unit root. A substantial difference in forecasting performance between the twomodels is established formany countries, but the results aremixed in their strength. The evidence for unemployment hysteresis in Austria, Finland, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan and Sweden is, however, convincing. For no country can unambiguous support for a mean reverting unemployment rate be found.