Nigeria’s rising joblessness rate has continued to add to its worsening misery index and low human capital development, forcing analysts to canvass for functional and structural policy changes to counter the huge unemployment which continues to defy several investment funds, policies, and initiatives by the federal government to curb the excess job losses through support for the economy.
The latest unemployment and underemployment statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics in Abuja showed that the labor force, which comprises of the population of working age between 15 and 64, increased to 122 million in the last quarter of 2020, 4.3% higher than the figure recorded in the second quarter of the same year, while the unemployment rate worsened to 33.3% from the 27.1% reported in the respective quarters, posting the worst performance on record.