Tanko Mohammed
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says unemployment rate witnessed an increase of 6.2 per cent from 27.1 per cent in Quarter Two, 2020 to 33.3 per cent in Quarter Four.
It said this on in Abuja on Monday in the “Labour Force Statistics, Unemployment and Underemployment for Q4, 2020” published on its website.
According to the report, underemployment rate declined from 28.6 per cent in Q2 to 22.8 per cent.
It said that the unemployment rate among rural dwellers was 34.5 per cent, up from 28.2 per cent in Q2, while urban dwellers reported a rate of 31.3 per cent up from 26.4 per cent.
It added that in the case of underemployment among rural dwellers, it declined to 26.9 per cent in Q4 from 31.5 per cent, while the rate among urban dwellers decreased to 16.2 per cent in Q4 from 23.2 per cent in Q2.
“For the period under review, Q4, the unemployment rate among young people (15-34 years) was 42.5 per cent up from 34.9 per cent, while the rate of underemployment for the same age group declined to 21 per cent from 28.2 per cent in Q2.
“These rates were the highest when compared to other age groupings,” it said.
Under State disaggregation, the report said Imo reported the highest rate of unemployment with 56.6 per cent, followed by Adamawa with 54.9 per cent and Cross River with 53.7 per cent.
It, however, said that Osun had the lowest rate in the South-West with 11.7 per cent.
For underemployment, the NBS said Benue recorded the highest with 43.5 per cent, while Lagos recorded the lowest underemployment rate with 4.5 per cent in Q4.
The report noted that 12,160,178 did not do any work in the last seven days preceding the survey.
According to the report, the number of persons in the economically active or working age population (15 – 64 years of age) during the reference period of the survey was 122,049,400.
This was 4.3 per cent higher than the figure recorded in Q2, which was 116,871,186.
It also said that the number of persons in the labour force (people within ages 15 -64, who were able and willing to work) was estimated to be 69,675,468.
This was 13.22 per cent less than the number persons in Q2. Of the number, those within the age bracket of 25-34 were highest, with 20,091,695 or 28.8 per cent of the labour force, it said.
The NBS added that the total number of people in employment (people with jobs) during the reference period was 46,488,079.
“Of this number, 30,572,440 were full-time employed (worked 40+ hours per week), while 15,915,639 were under-employed (working between 20-29 hours per week).
“This figure is 20.6 per cent less than the people in employment in Q2, 2020.”
The report added that unlike in the economically active population, the age group that accounted for the highest number under the labour force was the 25-34 age group.
It said that it was expected as most persons within the age group of 15-24 were involved in one form of schooling or the other, hence were not willing and/or available for work.
It said that while females were more dominant under the active population, though marginal, the reverse held for the labour force, where males were more dominant with 56.72 per cent and females accounting for 43.28 per cent.
