Nigeria’s unemployment rate reached 5.0% in Q3 2023 – NBS

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday that Nigeria’s unemployment rate surged to 5.0 percent in the third quarter of last year.

The NBS stated this in the latest Labour Force Survey released in Abuja.

It added that the figure was higher than the 4.2 percent recorded in Q2 of the same year.

The report highlighted a decline in the labour force participation rate among the working-age population to 79.5 percent in Q3 compared to 80.4 percent in Q2 of 2023.

It would be recalled that Nigeria had an unprecedented unemployment rate of 33.3 percent in Q4 2020.

This, however, dropped to 4.1 percent in Q1 2023 following a change in methodology by the NBS.

The report showed that the employment-to-population ratio stood at 75.6 percent in Q3, indicating a decrease of 1.5 percent compared to Q2.

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The combined rate of unemployment and time-related underemployment (LU2) rose to 17.3 percent in Q3 from 15.5 percent in Q2.

Self-employment accounted for about 87.3 percent of workers engagement in Q3, while the proportion of workers in wage employment was 12.7 percent.

Unemployment among individuals with post-secondary education reached 7.8 percent in Q3, while youth unemployment (aged 15-24 years) stood at 8.6 percent, marking a 1.4 percent increase compared to Q2.

In Q3 2023, the unemployment rate among men stood at 4.0 percent and 6.0 percent for women.

Geographically, urban areas reported a 6.0 percent unemployment rate compared to 4.0 percent in rural regions.

Youth faced a particularly high unemployment rate of 8.6 percent.

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