Nigeria’s unemployment rate rises marginally to 4.2% in Q2- NBS

Nigeria’s unemployment rate in the second quarter experienced a slight rise from 4.1% to 4.2%, indicating an increase of merely 0.1% when compared to Q1.

This is according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Labour Force report for the Q2, 2023.

According to the report, more women of working age were unemployed compared to their male counterparts. The male unemployment rate stood at 3.5% while that of women was 5.9%.

When analysed according to location, the Urban unemployment rate was 5.9% while rural unemployment stood at 2.5%.

Youth unemployment (15 to 24 years) stood at 7.2%- an increase of 0.3% from the 6.9% recorded in Q1.

The employment-to-population rate was reported at 77.1% in Q2.

Underemployment

The share of the work population who are underemployed dropped from 12.2% in Q1 to 11.8% in the period under review.

Analysing underemployment according to gender, more women were underemployed (15.3%) while that more men was 8.4%.

Underemployment in urban areas was reported at 10.3% while in rural areas was 13.2%.

The NBS defines underemployment as those who work less than 40 hours per week and are willing to work more.

Employee and Self-employment

According to the NBS report, 88.0% of employed Nigerians are self-employed while the other 12.0% are employees in Q2.

Analysed according to gender, more women reported being in self-employed at 91.0% while the share of employed males in self-employment stood at 85.2%.

Informal employment

Around 92.7% of employed Nigerians were working in the informal sector according to the report. This figure gets higher with women and those without formal education.

The rate of employed people without formal education in the informal sector stood at 99.6%.

In urban areas, informal employment was responsible for 88% of the working population while for rural areas the rate for Q2 is 97.3%.

Backstory

In August, the NBS published the Labour force report for Q4, 2022 and Q1 2023. Surprisingly, the unemployment rate dropped sharply from 33.3% recorded in Q4 of 2020 to 4.1% in Q1, of 2023.

The statistics bureau explained that the reason for the drop is as a result of the use of a revised methodology to describe unemployment.

Unlike previous reports where unemployment was defined as those working in paid employment for at least 1hr in the past 7 days.

This contradicts the previous methodology where unemployment is defined as those engaged in any productive activity for at least 20 hours weekly.