Nigeria recorded employment of 106.69 million persons aged between 15 and 64 in the second quarter of 2016, a 0.65 per cent higher than 106.00 million recorded in the first quarter.
This is contained in a statement issued by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Wednesday and signed the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr Yemi Kale.
Kale said economically active population or working age population such as persons between 15 and 64 years increased from 106.00 million in first quarter to 106.69 million in second quarter of 2016.
“This represents a 0.65 per cent increase over the previous quarter and a 3.02 per cent increase when compared to second quarter of 2014.
“In the second quarter of 2016, the labour force population (those within the working age population willing, able and actively looking for work) increased to 79.9 million from 78.5 million in the first quarter of 2016.
“This represents an increase of 1.78 per cent in the labour force during the quarter,’’ he said.
According to Kale, this means 1.39 million persons from the economically active population entered the labour force, that is, individuals that were able, willing and actively looking for work.
“This magnitude of this increase between first and second quarters of 2016 is smaller when compared to four quarter of 2015 and first quarter of 2016, which was an increase of 1.59million in the labour force population.
“ Within the reference period, the total number of person in full time employment (did any form of work for at least 40 hours) decreased by 351,350 or 0.65 per cent when compared to the previous quarter and also decreased by 749,414 or 1.38 per cent compared to second quarter of 2015.’’
He said with 106.69 million and 79.9million, it meant 26.8 million persons within the economically active or working age population decided not to work for one reason or the other in second quarter of 2016.
“Hence, were not part of the labour force and cannot be considered unemployed,’’ Kale said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the bureau describes the unemployed as those who were actively looking for work but could not find work for at least 20 hours during the reference week.
“Accordingly, you are unemployed if you did absolutely nothing at all or did something but far less than 20 hours during the reference week.’’ (NAN)