The National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday released new statistics on Nigeria’s unemployment rates which previously stood at 18.8 percent.
Part-time employment/underemployment slowed to 20.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018 from 21.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2017.
Although there was a marginal increase in the number of people employed from 69.09 million in Q3 2017 to 69.54 million in Q3 2018, the total number of people unemployed upped from 17.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 20.9 million in the third quarter of 2018.
According to this latest reports the figures are bleaker than government has been representing.
A presidential spokesman said in an interview that the chief executive of the statistics office told a meeting of cabinet members last week that analyses of job rates were largely focused on white-collar jobs.
“They had concentrated analysis overtime on white-collar jobs,” Garba Shehu said.
“They had not taken cognizance of job creation in Agriculture.”
Shehu argued that the figures collected by NBS in recent part had been unfair to president Muhammadu Buhari strides in job creation in Agriculture.
“We have created at least 12 million jobs in the area of agriculture,” Shehu added.
