Nigeria’s unemployment rate increased in Q2 – NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has stated that Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose to 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2023 going by the bureau’s newly adopted methodology.

According to the revised methodology made public in August, the NBS defines employed persons as individuals who work for at least one hour in the last seven days.

In a report released on Thursday, the NBS said the figure was a marginal increase of 0.1 percent from 4.1 percent recorded in Q1 2023.

The report stated that 80.4 percent of Nigeria’s labour force in the working-age population participated in the survey.

It stated that unemployment rate among men was 3.5 percent and 5.9 percent among women.

“Disaggregation by location, the unemployment rate was 5.9 percent in urban areas and 2.5 percent in rural areas,” the report added.

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For young people, it said the unemployment rate for 15-24-year-olds was 7.2 percent in Q2 2023.

It went further to state that 88 percent of employed Nigerians were primarily self-employed with the remaining 12 percent being primarily engaged as employees, adding that more women are self-employed than women

It said 85.2 percent of employed men were self-employed compared to 91.0 percent of employed women.

The rate of informal employment is the share of employed persons in the informal sector and informal employment.

For the informal employment rate, the figure was 92.7 percent.

The report stated, “Like the previous two quarters, the rate of women in informal employment is higher than that of men. Although the informality rate is high across all age groups, younger persons (15-24), and persons above 65 years were more informally employed.

“The rate of informal employment among people living in rural areas is 97.3 percent while the urban informality rate is estimated at 88 percent.

“Educational qualification seems to be negatively associated with informality as findings show that persons with higher qualifications are less likely to be in informal employment. 99.6 percent of people with no formal education were found to be in informal employment.”