The Statistician-General of the Federation/ CEO of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Prince Adeyemi Adeniran has revealed that waged employment is scarce in Nigeria, pointing out that only 11.8 percent are employed in waged employment as of quarter one of 2023.
Adeniran, who revealed this at the official launch of the new Nigeria Labour Force Survey, said that about three-quarters of Nigerians in the working age population, 76.7 percent in quarter one, in 2023 were engaged in some form of work for pay or profit.
He said, “This workforce is composed of individuals engaged in various types of work, including formal and informal employment. A further… 3.56 percent of the working-age population was engaged in subsistence agriculture in the first quarter of 2023. … A lot more Nigerians operate their own businesses or engage in agriculture. This figure was… 75.4 percent in the first quarter of 2023. The high share of self-employed persons amongst the employed shows that most Nigerians struggle to find wage employment, which is most desirable by Nigerians.”
According to him, “The share of the working age population in Nigeria that are not working was 21.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 19.8 percent in the first quarter of 2023”, adding that the unemployment rate in Nigeria for the first quarters of 2023 was 4.1 percent.
Adeniran noted that the unemployment rate for the first quarters of 2023 was 21.2 percent, stressing, “This indicates that, though persons are engaged, the engagement is not sufficient for them, and they would like to work additional hours of work.”
Using the ILO definition, he pointed out that 92.6 percent of persons were engaged in the informal sector in Nigeria in the first quarters.
