According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 87% of Nigerians of working age are self-employed. But it’s not primarily because people have entrepreneurial instincts. For many youths, self-employment is a survival tactic born from their lack of faith in the job market. Only 12.7% of Nigeria’s workforce is in wage employment. Nigeria has a crunching unemployment problem. Even after the NBS facelifted its methodology to dramatically reduce its unemployed workforce from 33% to 4.2%, the numbers are still rising, reaching 5% in Q3 2023. The former methodology counted anyone working less than 20 hours a week as unemployed, but the new system says anyone working up to an hour weekly is not unemployed. It also does not account for the 3-5 million annual new entrants in the job market.
SOURCE: VENTURES AFRICA
