….as NBS adopts global methodology for survey
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the coordinating agency for Nigeria’s statistical system, reported on Thursday that the nation’s unemployment rate remarkably dropped from 33.1% reported in March 2021 to 4.1% for the first quarter of 2023.
The statistics agency attributed the huge drop in the unemployment rate to the new methodology based on the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) guidelines used in computing the figures after a nationwide exercise, rather than jobs created in the economy during the survey period.
In the report titled ‘Nigeria’s Labour Force Survey (NLFS)’ released this month, employment is defined as any labour for profit even for an hour in seven days
With the adoption of the new methodology, the NBS enhanced its data collection process for the NLFS by sampling 35,520 households nationwide and the new approach provides for ongoing data collection throughout the year, delivering national-level results on a quarterly basis, and state-level results annually.
A further analysis of the latest unemployment data reflected an uptick in the percentage of working-age Nigerians (defined as persons aged 15 years and above) who were employed: 73.6% in Q4 2022 and 76.7% in Q1 2023, implying that a majority of Nigerians were engaged in some form of employment for at least one hour per week, earning pay or profit.
Similarly, the statistics agency’s latest report indicated that the rate of underemployment, defined as those working less than 40 hours a week but willing to work more, stood at 13.7% in Q4 2022 and declined to 12.2% in Q1 2023 while the percentage of those in wage employment was 13.4% in Q4 2022, dropping slightly to 11.8% in Q1 2023.
On the gender and demographic distribution, the NLFS report showed that about one-third of employed persons (36.4% in Q4 2022 and 33.2% in Q1 2023) worked fewer than 40 hours per week, and that the trend was more prevalent among women, individuals with lower educational qualifications, the youth, and those residing in rural areas.
The Bureau’s latest report further indicated that in terms of entrepreneurial activities and household support, the majority of employed Nigerians operated their own businesses or engaged in farming, with 73.1% doing so in Q4 2022 and 75.4% in Q1 2023. A further 10.7% in Q4 2022 and 10.6% in Q1 2023 were involved in unpaid household businesses.
This is even as it disclosed that on Apprenticeship and Internships, 2.6% of the employed population were engaged as apprentices or interns in Q4 2022, and this figure declined to 2.2% in Q1 2023.
