11.2 million Nigerians are now unemployed, says NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 11.2 million Nigerians are now unemployed.

According to the latest unemployment and underemployment report, released by NBS on Thursday, a total of 554,311 persons came into the unemployment bracket within the third quarter of 2016.

The report also showed that 15.9 million Nigerians are underemployed, bringing the total number of unemployed (11.2  million) and underemployed (15.9 million) Nigerians to 27.12 million.

“The economically active population or working age population (persons within ages 15 and 64) increased from 106.69 million in Q2 2016 to 108.03 million,” NBS said in its report.

“In Q3 2016, the labour force population (i.e those within the working age population willing, able and actively looking for work) increased to 80.67 million from 79.9 million in Q2 2016.

“Out of a total youth labour force population of 40.16million (representing 49.7% of total labour force in Nigeria of 80.67 million), a total of 18.3million of them were either unemployed or underemployed in Q3 2016.”

Earlier reports  revealed that 2.6 million Nigerians became unemployed in the first and second quarter of 2016.

NBS had initially revealed that 1.46 million Nigerians became unemployed in the third quarter of 2015, while another 518,102 were also unemployed in the fourth quarter of the same year.

This brings the total freshly unemployed persons in the economy to a record high of 5,134,913 since the All Progressives Congress took office in May 2015.

The report also revealed that during that within April to  June, 2016, “the number of unemployed in the labour force, increased by 554,311 persons, resulting in an increase in the national unemployment rate to 13.9% in Q3 2016 from 13.3% in Q2, 12.1% in Q1 2016, 10.4% in Q4 2015 and 9.9% in Q3 2015”.

“Accordingly, there were a total of 27.12 million persons in the Nigerian labour force in Q3 2016, that were either unemployed or underemployed compared to 26.06million in Q2 and 24.5 million in Q1 2016.”

Yemi Kale, statistician general of the federation, who spoke at the Savannah Centre policy monitoring dialogue in Abuja, earlier in the month, said, Nigeria would need to create above two million jobs per year if it would stand a chance at beating the deficit.