Nigerian unemployment rises by over 27% during the second quarter of the year as a result of Covid-19

UNEMPLOYMENT rose by a staggering 27.1% during the second quarter of 2020 across Nigeria due to the debilitating impact of the coronavirus pandemic according to the latest data published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Nigerian has been hard-hit by the Covisd-19 pandemic as 95% of government revenue comes from the sale of crude oil and with both prices and demand collapsing, the state has become severely cash-strapped. Also, because Nigeria manufacturers very little, it does nor the flexibility to adjust to the volatility in the global oil market, thus suffering the full brunt of being a mono economy.

With industry unable to function, the private sector has been hard-hit, forcing widespread redundancies. According to the NBS, the unemployment rate during the second quarter of the year rose to 27.1%, from the 23.1% recorded in the third quarter of 2018, while the under-employment rate increased to 28.6% from 20.1% during the same period.

Also, the number of persons in the economically active or working age population of 15 to 64 years of age during the reference period of the survey was 116,871,186. The number of persons in the labour force who are able and willing to work was estimated to be 80,291,894, which was 11.3% less than the number persons in the third quarter of 2018.

Of this number, those within the age bracket of 25 to 34 represented the highest number of workers with 23,328,460 or 29.1% of them in the labour force. For the period under review, , the unemployment rate among young people aged between 15 and 34 was 34.9%, up from 29.7%, while the rate of underemployment for the same age group rose to 28.2% from 25.7% in the third quarter of 2018.