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The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics in its report on Monday said more than 23 million Nigerians are jobless.
According to the NBS, the unemployment rate in Nigeria rose from 27.1 per cent in Q2 to 33.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year (Q4 2020).
The Bureau added that about 122,049,400 persons between age 15 and 64 of the working population age of Nigeria are economically active during the Q4 2020.
This implies that the unemployment rate in Nigeria is 4.3 per cent higher than the Q2 which was 116,871,186 which show the number of persons able and willing to work within the age-grade mentioned above was estimated to be 69,675,468.
The total number of people in employment (i.e., people with jobs) during the reference period was 46,488,079. Of this number, 30,572,440 were full-time employed (i.e., worked 40+ hours per week), while 15,915,639 were under-employed (i.e., working between 20-29 hours per week).
This figure is 20.6 per cent less than the people in employment in Q2, the NBS survey said.
The NBS report said: “In line with its statutory mandate to provide government and policymakers with reliable and timely information, the National Bureau of Statistics routinely computes and disseminates the labour force statistics.
“These statistics presented in this report are generated from a nationwide socio-economic survey, which sampled thirty-three thousand three hundred households across the country, both in urban and rural areas.
“Under this exercise, indicators such as the economically active population, labour force, unemployment and underemployment rates were computed to inform the work of policymakers and government.
“The last unemployment survey conducted was in the 2nd quarter of 2020, which produced an unemployment rate of 27.1% and an underemployment rate of 28.6%.
“Following the success of the Telephone-based Abridged Labour Force Survey (LFS) under Covid-19, Quarter 2 (Q2) 2020, preparations continued to ensure the continuity of the production of this important economic indicator to provide much-needed information on the level of employment and unemployment in the country.
“Following the lifting of movement restrictions by government in the q4 2020, in line with set COVID-19 guidelines and protocols for interactions, the NBS conducted this round of the survey using the usual face-to-face interview for data collection.”
It said the unemployment rate among rural dwellers was 34.5 per cent, up from 28.2 per cent in Q2, 2020, while urban dwellers reported a rate of 31.3 per cent up from 26.4 per cent.
The survey said: “In the case of underemployment among rural dwellers, it declined to 26.9% from 31.5 per%, while the rate among urban dwellers decreased to 16.2% from 23.2% in Q2, 2020.
“For the period under review, Q4, 2020, the unemployment rate among young people (15-34 years) was 42.5% up from 34.9%, while the rate of underemployment for the same age group declined to 21.0% from 28.2% in Q2, 2020. These rates were the highest when compared to other age groupings.
“Under state disaggregation, Imo reported the highest rate of unemployment with 56.6%, this was followed by Adamawa and Cross River States with 54.9% and 53.7% respectively. The state with the lowest rate was Osun in the Southwest with 11.7%.
For underemployment, the state which recorded the highest rate was Benue with 43.5%, while Lagos State recorded the lowest underemployment rate, with 4.5% in Q4, 2020.
“A total number of 12,160,178 did not do any work in the last seven days preceding the survey.”