Nigeria is reporting unemployment data for the first time in two years and, with a revised methodology, the jobless rate has plunged.
Data released on Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics showed the unemployment rate declined to 4.1% in the first quarter, compared with 5.3% in the previous three months. The last time the country released jobless data was in March 2021, when it reported an unemployment rate of 33.3% in the final three months of 2020.
The Abuja-based statistics office said the new jobless rate figure is based on an “enhanced its methodology of collecting labour market data through the Nigeria labor force survey in line with International Labour Organisation guidelines.” It said the changes make it impossible to compare the new data with the former statistics.
While the new measure shows that 76.7% of Nigerians were engaged in some type of employment for at least one hour in a week for pay or profit, only 11.8% of the labor force were involved in wage employment. At least nine out of 10 of those employed work in the informal sector, with about one-fifth of the working age population not engaged in any form of work.
That aside, the new result places the country in the same company as the UK, where unemployment was 4.2% in June, and in somewhat better shape than the eurozone’s 6.4%.
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