The coronavirus pandemic resulted in a fifth or 20 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce losing their jobs, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
The cuts followed disruptions to supply chains, continuing supply and demand shocks, and a drop in consumer confidence, the agency said in a statement Tuesday, citing a study it conducted with the United Nations Development Programme.
About 60 per cent of the almost 3,000 businesses surveyed reported that one in three of them knew of a company that had permanently closed down because of operational challenges resulting from the pandemic. Four-fifths of enterprises reported decreased production, it said.
Unemployment in Africa’s largest economy surged to the second highest on a global list of countries monitored by Bloomberg.
The jobless rate in Nigeria rose to 33.3 per cent in the three months through December, according to a report published by National Bureau of Statistics on its website Monday. That’s up from 27.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2020, the last period for which the agency released labor-force statistics.
One in three Nigerians able and willing to work had no jobs in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
