A research by The Punch indicates that 88.2% of Nigerians of working age do not have salary-paying jobs.
According to National Bureau of Statistics data, only approximately 11.8 percent of working-age Nigerians had salary-paying jobs in the first quarter of 2023.
Wage employment is defined as any salaried or compensated job under contract (written or unwritten) to another person, organization, or enterprise in both official and informal economies, according to asksource.info.
The NBS also revealed that the percentage of wage employment fell by 1.6 percentage points, from 13.4 percent in Q4 2022 to 11.8 percent in Q1 2023.
According to the NBS’s Nigeria Labour Force Survey (4th Quarter 2022 and 1st Quarter 2023), “the share of wage employment was 13.4 percent in Q4 2022 and 11.8 percent in Q1 2023.”
However, unlike in its prior report, the NBS did not provide a statistic for the total number of working-age Nigerians.
The NBS estimated Nigeria’s working-age population to be 122 million in 2020.
According to the NBS, the majority of Nigerians are self-employed, with only a small percentage working for a wage.
According to the research, “the majority of Nigerians are self-employed, with a much smaller proportion holding wage jobs.” In Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, 73.1 percent and 75.4 percent of employed Nigerians worked in their own firm or farming activity for their primary job, respectively.
“On the other hand, 13.4 percent (in Q4 2022) and 11.8 percent (in Q1 2023) of employed Nigerians were wage-employed in their primary jobs.” An additional 10.7% (in Q4 2022) and 10.5% (in Q1 2023) of working Nigerians were principally involved in assisting in a household business, gaining salary or profit indirectly even though it was not their own.
“A small proportion of employed Nigerians (2.6 percent in Q4 2022 and 2.2 percent in Q1 2023) were primarily engaged as apprentices or interns.” Those assisting a household member who worked for someone else accounted for around 0.2% in both Q4 2022 and Q1 2023.”
It was also revealed that gender, educational level, age, and urban-rural divide were all highly connected with the chance of working for a living.
Employed men were more likely to be primarily engaged in wage jobs than employed women; employed people with higher levels of educational attainment: those with post-secondary education were more likely to be primarily engaged in wage jobs; employed people over the age of 65 and those between the ages of 15 and 24 were the least likely to be primarily engaged in wage jobs; and employed urban dwellers were more likely to be primarily engaged in wage jobs than employed rural dwellers.
Despite progress, Nigeria still has one of the highest unemployment rates among the neighbouring countries.
According to NBS data, the unemployment rate is 0.7 per cent in Niger, 3.9 per cent in Ghana, 1.5 per cent in Chad, and 1.8 per cent in Benin while Cameroon and Nigeria both had rates of 4.1%.
However, the NBS has been chastised for its new methodology, which some believe does not provide a realistic image of the country’s realities.
