According to a new study provided by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s jobless rate fell to 4.1 percent in the first quarter of 2023.
According to the most recent NBS report for the fourth quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate was 33.3%.
According to NBS, the survey was performed using the 13th ICLS, which was created and adopted in 1982 at the International Conference of Labour Statisticians.
The statement read;
“The latest Nigeria Labour Force Survey (NLFS) report sheds light on the dynamics of labour market within the country.
“This report covers the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, presenting an in-depth analysis of key labour market indicators such as employment, including unemployment rates, underemployment rates, hours worked, and informal employment.
“The revised methodology aligns with our contemporaries in Africa such as Ghana, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Benin, Gambia etc, in line with international best practices.”
According to the NBS, Nigeria’s unemployment rate, which was 5.3 percent in Q4 2022 and then fell to 4.1 percent in Q1 2023, is comparable to rates in other developing countries where work, “even if only for a few hours and in low-productivity jobs,” is necessary to make ends meet, especially in the absence of any social protection for the unemployed.
The revised methodology also defines employed people as those who labor for pay or profit and have worked for at least one hour in the last seven days, as opposed to 40 hours.
The statement added;
“The old methodology placed a range on the working-age population- 15 – 64 years, while considering working hours between 20-39 hours as underemployment, 1-19 hrs as unemployment.
“In addition, subsistence agriculture and temporary absentees from employment work were not properly represented as well as the absence of mutually exclusiveness of unemployment and employment.
“These improvements, among others, captured in the revised computations will make Nigeria’s Labour Force data comparable with other countries.”
The underemployment rate was 13.7 percent in Q4 2022 and 12.2 percent in Q1 2023, as defined by NBS as a proportion of employed people working fewer than 40 hours per week and declaring themselves willing and available to work more.
According to the research, the rate of informal work, which includes agriculture, among employed Nigerians was 93.5 percent in Q4 2022 and 92.6 percent in Q1 2023. According to the NBS, the NLFS also revealed that almost three-quarters of working-age Nigerians were employed.
According to the agency, the percentage was 73.6 percent in Q4 2022 and 76.7 percent in Q1 2023, suggesting that the majority of people worked at least one hour each week for pay or profit.
