Nigerians, particularly the army of unemployed persons, who are in their millions, were taken aback on Thursday, August 31, 2023, when the National Bureau
of Statistics, NBS, released a report that the country’s unemployment rate had dropped from 33.3 to 4.1 percent.
The old methodology, according to the NBS, defines the working-age population as those within the age bracket of 15 to 64 years, and considers working between 20 and 39 hours as underemployed. The Bureau also argued that classifying those working between one hour and 19 hours as unemployed was wrong.
In other words, they believe that what should be of paramount importance to the government should be how to create employment for the army of unemployed youths that increase at a geometric rate on a monthly basis, instead of concocting one figure that does not have any bearing on the reality of the situation. They wondered why the NBS would choose the one-hour working methodology against the 20 hours and 40 hours working standards.
Nigerians from across every divide, ranging from the organized labour unions to professional bodies, civil society organisations and experts among others have been commenting on the NBS latest figure, with some out-rightly rejecting the report as misleading and unreflective of the prevailing unemployment crisis in the country.
“You then ask yourself- where are the new jobs that have absorbed the hundreds of thousands of graduates that are entering the labour market annually? The truth is that rebasing the employment template in order to get a lower figure for unemployment is not helpful because it may undermine the credibility of the NBS’ work in the future.
He said: “If the NBS claims it adopted the ILO’s methodology, who are the stakeholders involved in using that template? What were the sources of their data? It is just like rebasing the economy to say you are doing better, whereas you are not. He wondered how somebody could come up with an unemployment figure at the material time, when the government was still trying to set things in motion, describing the NBS report as unacceptable and misleading.
“Meanwhile, there is an immediate positive outcome, which is the marked improvement in the fiscal space of governments at all levels,” he stated. In its own submission, the Centre for Social Justice, CSJ, said the new methodology which the NBS employed to determine the level of unemployment and underemployment in Nigeria was antithetical to the country’s reality.
“The whole basis of a job report is to help the government to determine whether its plans, policies and laws geared towards reducing unemployment achieve the desired milestones. What is the point of a job report that tells the government that more Nigerians are employed when it is a clear and notorious fact that unemployment is increasing?”
“The CSJ previously emphasized the urgency for the NBS to provide up-to-date employment data for the years 2021 and 2022. The CSJ recognizes that a robust job report serves as a crucial tool for governmental planning and policy evaluation. However, a coalition of Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, led by Chief Ogakwu Dominic, has urged Nigerians to accept the report because it would help the government to plan and budget effectively.
A professor of statistics at the University of Ibadan, UI, and Coordinator of the UI Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistics , Olusanya Olubusoye, argued that the focus should be on how many jobs that were created and how many industries that developed during the period under review.
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