Bloomberg Report: Nigeria to Have the Highest Jobless Rate in the World
- Nigeria is facing the prospect of having the highest number of unemployed people in the world
- Economic experts say the West African giant will break the world record soon if authorities do not address the issue
- Nigeria is already home to the poorest people in the world
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A report by Bloomberg indicates that Nigeria, home to the world’s largest number of extremely poor people, looks set to break another record: the highest jobless rate.
Already, a third of Nigeria's labour force is without employment or working only a few hours a week — second only to Namibia in the list of 82 countries tracked by Bloomberg.
The report noted that unemployment has more than quadrupled over five years and the World Bank was warning even before the coronavirus pandemic began that Nigeria could become home to a quarter of the world’s destitute within a decade.
Source: Twitter
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The report acknowledged that Buhari has tried to stem the decline but noted that the measures have had limited success.
Godwin Emefiele, the central bank governor was quoted to have said recently:
“The level of unemployment must be addressed swiftly to moderate the restiveness among the populace.”
Legit.ng had earlier reported that unemployment in Nigeria surged to the second-highest on a global list of countries monitored by Bloomberg.
The jobless rate in Nigeria rose to 33.3% in the three months through December 2020, according to a report published by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, on its website on Monday, March 15.
That’s up from 27.1% in the second quarter of 2020, the last period for which the agency released labor-force statistics.
The report further revealed that a third of the 69.7 million-strong labour force in Nigeria either did nothing or worked for less than 20 hours a week, making them unemployed.
Nigeria surpassed South Africa on a list of 82 countries whose unemployment rates are tracked by Bloomberg. Namibia leads the list with 33.4%.
Experts say the number of people looking for jobs will keep rising as population growth continues to outpace output expansion in Nigeria.
More worrisome, Nigeria is expected to be the world’s third-most-populous country by 2050, with over 300 million people, according to projections by the United Nations.
The report was published days after Nigeria formally exited recession as the country's economy grew by 0.11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 according to a recent report released by the NBS.
The data was collated after two consecutive quarters of negative growth which resulted in Africa's biggest economy sliding into recession.
Source: Legit.ng
