Nigeria’s unemployment rate with stood at 33.3 per cent as of the fourth quarter of 2020 as been described as the third highest in the world.
Analysts at Financial Derivatives Company Limited (FDC) said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) unemployment data showed that the country’s unemployment ranking dropped from the fifth position to third position globally.
The NBS report said the unemployment rate spiked by 6.2 per cent to 33.3 per cent from 27.1 percent in Q2’20.
The analysts said Bosnia and Herzegovina had the highest unemployment rate of 33.69 per cent globally while Namibia ranks second with 33.4 percent.
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FDC said the employment data was in contrast with the recent exit of Nigeria from recession and the stimulus package distributed to support businesses and households.
According to the analysts, Nigeria is facing a crisis of poverty, debt and reduced productivity.
“This data point will be very disturbing to policy makers after the stimulus package of N2.3trillion or 4 per cent of GDP and the recent greatly heralded exit from recession,” they said.
“It is troubling to the extent that when conflated with the high level of multidimensional poverty of 64.8 per cent in the Northwest of Nigeria, it shows that there is a simmering crisis of poverty, unemployment, debt and productivity in Nigeria.”
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“The misery index, which is the sum of unemployment and inflation is now 50.63 per cent. The good news, however, is that underemployment declined by approximately the same magnitude 5.8 per cent as the increase in unemployment. It looks coincidental but it means that an underemployed man is less dangerous to society than a completely unemployed citizen,” they added.
They warned that the rising inflation and unemployment will worsen the country’s misery level and could trigger social unrest.
According to them, addressing both challenges will require attacking one challenge before the other.
