Nigeria Unemployment Rate Surges to 9.9 Percent

According to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report, the number of unemployed in the labour force increased by 1,454,620 persons between the second quarter (Q2) and third quarter (Q3) of 2015, resulting in an increase in unemployment rate to 9.9% in Q3 2015 from 8.2% in Q2 2015 and 7.5% in Q1 2015. This represents a fourth consecutive rise in the unemployment rate since Q3 2014.

The report shows that in Q3 the number of working age population willing and actively looking for work increased to 75.9 million from 74.0 million in Q2 2015, representing an increase of 2.6 percent in the labour force. This means 1,929,800 economically active persons within 15‐64 age bracket entered the labour force i.e. were able and willing and actively looking for work between July 1 and September 30 2015.

This consisted of newly qualified graduates, new entrants into the economically active population actively seeking work and previous members of the economically active population that choose not to work for whatever reasons in earlier periods (number of those not willing to work in the economically active population declined to 28.3 million in Q3 2015 from 29.5million in Q2 2015 meaning about 1.3 million people in the working age population that choose not to work in Q2 decided to work in Q3 2015 thereby adding to the labour force).

According to NBS Q3 job creation report, about 475,180 new net jobs were created in Q3 2015. However, this was inadequate to match the over 1.9mn new entrants into the labour market in Q3 2015.