Nigerian unemployment rate rises to 33.3% as 23.18m jobless -NBS

Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose to 33.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020 (Q4 2020) compared to 27.1 per cent in Q2, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday.

This implies that 23.18 million persons of the country’s labour force either did nothing or worked for less than 20 hours a week, making them unemployed by the country’s definition of unemployment.

It also meant that there was an additional 1.42 million persons added to country’s unemployment portfolio when compared to 21.77 million unemployed persons in Q2.

However, the NBS pointed out that the underemployment rate decreased from 28.6 per cent to 22.8 per cent in the period under review.