ABUJA: The National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday said the country’s unemployment rate has risen from 12.1 per cent in the first quarter of this year to 13.3 per cent as at the end of the second quarter. The bureau stated this in the unemployment report which was released by the Statistician General of the Federation in Abuja. In the report, the bureau said the number of people that were unemployed or underemployed increased from 24.4 million as at the end of the first quarter to 26.06 million persons.
The report reads in part, “The number of underemployed in the labour force (those working but doing menial jobs not commensurate with their qualifications or those not engaged in fulltime work and merely working for few hours) increased by 392,390 or 2.61 per cent resulting in an increase in the underemployment rate to 19.3 per cent in Q2 2016 from 19.1 per cent in Q1 2016.
“During the reference period, the number of unemployed in the labour force, increased by 1,158,700 persons, resulting in an increase in the national unemployment rate to 13.3% in Q2 2016 from 12.1 in Q1 2016. “In view of this, there were a total of 26.06 million persons in the Nigerian labour force in Q2 2016, that were either unemployed or underemployed compared to compared to 24.5 million in Q1 2016.”
