The National Bureau of Statistics released its latest unemployment and underemployment numbers revealing that about 7.5 million Nigerians who are eligible to work cannot get a job. 3.5 million or about half of this number are young people who fall within the age bracket of 25 to 44 years. The Bureau further explains that the this number of unemployed Nigerians make up about 4% of the world’s unemployed population.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) on whose recommendation most countries in the world unemployment methodology is based including Nigeria, states that 201 million people globally are unemployed and this may rise to 219 million by 2019. With 7.5 million Nigerians technically unemployed, this means 4% of the worlds unemployed are Nigerians.
Nigerians unemployment problem is probably much worse than the data currently suggest as it assumptions for who is employed considers millions of people who will rather work menial jobs to just to survive. It calls this metric underemployment and puts it at 17%.4. The figure puts those who are underemployed to 13.2 million.
The report further revealed that Nigeria’s unemployment rate is worse than about 22 African countries.
Nigeria with an unemployment rate of 9.9% in Q3 2015 has a better unemployment rate than reported in 67 countries but worse than 113 countries, including 21 African countries with unemployment rates lower than 9.9%.
The ILO has previously forecast a global unemployment rate of 5.9% this year and next, compared with 5.5% before the global financial crisis in 2007, implying that Nigeria’s Q3 unemployment rate of 9.9% (minus an additional 17.4% underemployment) is higher than the global average. The highest unemployment rate in the world is recorded in Djibouti (54%), Congo(46%), Bosnia and Herzegovinian(43%), Haiti (40%), Kosovo(35%), while the lowest are found in Qatar (0.2%), Cambodia (0.3%), Belarus(0.5%), Thailand(0.8%), Benin (1.0%), Laos (1.40%) and Guinea Bissau(1.80%).
