More than 17m Nigerians have become unemployed since 2014- NBS report

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said that 21.76 million Nigerians are now unemployed as the country’s current unemployment rate stands at 27.1 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a report published this week.

According the report, the number of unemployed Nigerians went from 20.93 in 2018 to 21.76 million in the second quarter of 2020.

This means more than 17 million Nigerians have become unemployed since December 2014, while the total working age population has grown by almost the same number in those six years.

The report further stated that for the first time in the history of the revised NBS unemployment reports, the number of people in the labour force willing to work dropped by at least 10 million.

The bureau stated that unemployment could increase due to “people previously outside the labor force (e.g students, housewives, etc)” deciding to join.

“A rise in the unemployment rate is not entirely equivalent to an increase in job losses. Rather, an increase in unemployment can occur as a result of several reasons, of which loss of an existing job is just one,” the report said.

According to the report, unemployment is prevalent among the age group 25 to 34, where over seven million people are unemployed.

This week’s report is the first labour force statistics report released by NBS since 2018.