The many mysteries of the Nigerian Labour Force

• Working age populace predominantly lives in rural Nigeria;
• Rural Nigeria also accounted for more full employment, under-employment, and unemployment;
• The number of persons in Nigeria’s labour force decreased as the number of persons within the working age increased;
• While women comprised 51.6 per cent of the working age population, they only make up 40.6% of the workforce composition;
• Educational qualification appears to have an inconsistent impact on employment chances.

It is no longer news that unemployment in Nigeria was 27.1% for Q2, 2020. This estimate represents a 4% increase from the 23.1% unemployment rate recorded in Q3, 2018. In actual figures, 21.8 million Nigerians had no jobs as at the second quarter of 2020. In contrast, 44.3 per cent of Nigerians had work (fully employed). Underemployment rate was 28.6 per cent. Further, 15.4 per cent worked for less than 20 hours weekly. And per the recently published Labour Force Statistics, 11.7 per cent of our population are “lazy”.

Declining labour force versus increasing working age

Beyond the reality of increasing unemployment, the statistics have shown other dimensions to Nigeria’s Labour force. According to the report, the number of persons in Nigeria’s Labour force decreased by 11.3 per cent when compared to the third-quarter of 2018. In 2018, Nigeria’s labour force accounted for 90.4 million people; a staggering 9.9 million exited, leaving only 80.5 million people. However, the number of persons within the working age increased by about 1.3 percent. Similarly, the total working age increased from 115.4 million people in 2018 to 116.9 million people in 2020. Yet, only 68.7 per cent of Nigeria’s population within working age is in the labour force.

From the preceding, you can observe an unusual relationship between the labour force and working population. What could have pulled as much as 9.9 million Nigerians off the labour force? While migration could have been a cause, Nigeria’s current net migration rate stands at -0.295 per 1,000 population. In 2019, net migration rate was -0.303 per 1,000 population; it was -0.310 per 1,000 population in 2018. In plain terms, if there were 200 million people in Nigeria in 2018, migration accounted for only 62,000 out-movement at the stated rate. With net migration rates of -0.303 per 1,000 in 2019 and -0.295 per 1,000 in 2020, only 60,600 and 59,000 out-movements would have occurred in 2019 and 2020. In total, less than 182,000 people could have migrated between 2018 and now. Note that net migration rate shows the contribution of migration (in and out) to the overall level of population change. Thus, with net migration rates as started, migration does not appear to be a probable cause of the decline in Nigeria’s labour force.

Perhaps the decline in labour force suggests a shift to “undocumented” employment in the country. Undocumented here means income-generating ventures that are illegal, but gaining prominence among the working age population in the country. For example, online fraud and cyber crime have been on the rise in Nigeria. According to a Deloitte report, the estimated cost of cybercrime in Nigeria is about 0.08 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This converts to about ₦127 billion cybercrime loss annually. With this relatively high cybercrime loss, several persons might have been absorbed by that illegal venture alone!

Gender & the Labour Force

Females represent 51.6 per cent of Nigeria’s working age population, while males account for 48.4 per cent. Yet, women represented only 48 per cent of the labour force population. Further, lesser women than men were fully employed. In fact, only 40.6 percent of the total 35.6 million fully employed Nigerians were women. Conversely, women had the higher percentage in underemployment and unemployment accounting for 52% and 56%.

What’s education to do with it?

The labour force statistics have also shown that about 74 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce population did not possess education beyond secondary school level. As low as 35.5 per cent completed secondary education. Worse, though, 19.7 per cent never attended school, and 18.5 per cent completed primary education. Only 8.7 percent had a bachelor’s or higher national diploma degree; 8.1 per cent had a Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE) or ordinary diploma qualification. And for postgraduate education, less than one per cent had master’s and doctorate degrees.

In truth, educational qualification appears to have little impact on employment rate. For instance, vocational/commercial education which represented only 0.35 percent of the workforce population had the most percentage of fully employed persons (56 per cent). This is followed by master’s degree (55 per cent), doctorate degree (51 per cent), primary education (48 per cent), and senior secondary education (46 per cent). The lowest percentage of fully employed people were those that had below primary school education (27. per cent), first degree holders (40 percent), and those that never attended school (40 per cent).

By place of residence

Residents of Nigeria’s rural areas topped the list in labour force population, full employment, underemployment, and unemployment. They account for 65 per cent of the labour force population. 59 per cent of full employment in Nigeria was also from the rural areas. Reports also showed that most under-employment (71 per cent) and unemployment (67 per cent) were in rural Nigeria.

By geo-political zones, we observed most of the unemployment numbers in the south-south (5.15 million), northwest (4.53 million), and north-central (3.52 million). With 2.58 million unemployed people, northeastern Nigeria had the lowest unemployment number in the country. Rivers, Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, and Imo had the highest unemployment numbers, viz: 1.71 million, 1.42 million, 1.34 million, 1.33 million, and 1.21 million, respectively. However, under state disaggregation, Imo reported the highest rate of unemployment (48.7 per cent). Akwa-Ibom (45.2 per cent) and Rivers (43.7 percent) heel.

The reality

The labour force statistics have shown a variety of interesting dimensions about employment in Nigeria. Within its extensive scope, the data describes the importance of Nigeria’s rural areas in the employment demographics. Rural Nigeria accounted for most of the labour force population, most employment, most underemployment, and even most unemployment! So while there is undoubtedly a need to improve conditions in rural Nigeria concerning education and other metrics, there is untapped potential too! The government, therefore, needs to position them for optimal labour utilisation, delivering more employment.

Decrease in the number of persons in the labour force while the working age population increased requires urgent investigation. As suggested, there might have been a covert shift to illegal ventures that the government failed to capture. Closely related to this is the need to investigate the gender difference in workforce population and employment. They should provide opportunities to absorb more women into Nigeria’s labour force.

Also, the reality that educational qualification does not guarantee employment is discouraging. While higher qualification increased chances of employment, the high percentage of unemployed first-degree holders is appalling. According to Mr Hassan Soweto, the National Coordinator for Education Rights Campaign (ERC), lack of decent jobs discourages education patronage. Thus, Nigeria should make deliberate efforts to provide decent and corresponding employment according to competence and educational qualification.