More discordant voices of experts have continued to trail the latest figures released by National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) that unemployment rate rose from 27.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2020 to 33.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Industry followers who spoke to our correspondents say the figure is far less than reality considering the level of harsh operating environment in the country.
The NBS stated in its report on ‘Labour force Statistics: Unemployment and underemployment report- Abridged labour force survey under COVID-19 (Q4, 2020) that this translated to 23.19 million unemployed people. Part of the report read, “During the reference period, the computed national unemployment rate rose from 27.1 per cent in Q2, 2020 to 33.3 per cent in Q4, 2020, while the underemployment rate decreased from 28.6 per cent to 22.8 per cent. “A combination of both the unemployment and underemployment rate for the reference period gave a figure of 56.1 per cent. The NBS report said that unemployment rate was highest for persons in the labour force between the ages of 15-24 with 53.4 per cent and 25-34 with 37.0 per cent, which represents the youth population in Nigeria. It also noted that unemployment and underemployment was higher for women than men in the fourth quarter of 2020.
