We hope you caught our thread last week on the recently released National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) unemployment figures. It inspired us to look a bit deeper into the data gap that causes 10 million Nigerians to disappear from a national unemployment survey.
In Mark Twain’s words “facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” So we ask what made the statistics so pliable to erase millions of workers?
If you didn’t see the thread, you can find it here but here’s a recap.
A little bit of good news and a lot of bad
Nigeria’s unemployment rate is growing at a slower pace. But once you account for underemployment, it is increasing rapidly (the “combined unemployment” rate).
The unemployment rate rose from 23.1% in Q3’2018 to 27.1% in Q2’2020, which was almost good news considering the unemployment rate had been rising rapidly up till now — from 14% in 2016 to 19% in 2017 and then 23% in 2018. A
