The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has disclosed that more than a quarter of Nigeria’s workers were not gainfully employed in the second quarter of this year, saying, 27.1 percent of the country’s workers were not employed during second quarter of 2020.
NBS said that the number of Nigeria unemployed rates rose sharply from 23.1 percent, the level it had maintained since the third quarter of 2018, to 27.1 in the second quarter of 2020.
The bureau, in a report on Friday, tagged: Labour Force Statistics: Unemployment and Underemployment Report’, revealed that the number of persons in the economically active age, 15 – 64 years, jumped from over 115 million in Q3 2018 to 116 million during the period under review.
According to the bureau, the unemployment rate among young people between age 15 and 34years was 34.9 percent, an increase from 29.7 percent, while the rate of underemployment for the same age group rose to 28.2 percent from 25.7 percent in Q3 2018.
The bureau added that these rates from the age group were the highest when compared to other age groupings in the country.
In the report, it was further revealed by NBS that a number of persons between the active age and willing to work, was over 80 million which was 11.3 percent less than the number of persons in Q3 2018.
“Of this number, those within the age bracket of 25-34 were highest, with 23,328,460 or 29.1 percent of the labour force,” it added.
A further peep into the latest NBS unemployment data indicated that the number of employed people in Q2 2020 slumped by 15.8 percent to 58,527,276 when placed side by side with that of Q3 2018.
“Of this number, 35,585,274 were full-time employed (i.e. worked 40+ hours per week), while 22,942,003 were underemployed (i.e. working between 20-29 hours per week),” the report revealed.
At 48.7 percent, Imo State has the highest unemployment rate in the country and is trailed by Akwa-Ibom State with 45.2 percent and Rivers State 43.7 percent, however, Anambra State has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation with 17 percent.
“For underemployment, the state which recorded the highest rate was Zamfara with 43.7 percent, while Anambra State recorded the lowest underemployment rate, with 17 percent in Q2 2020,” the agency said.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBS said: “2,736,076 did not do any work in the last seven days preceding the survey due to the lockdown but had secure jobs to return to after the lockdown.”
