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Nigeria Unemployment
The national unemployment rate, estimated by the Office
of
Statistics as 4.3 percent of the labor force in 1985,
increased
to 5.3 percent in 1986 and 7.0 percent in 1987, before
falling to
5.1 percent in 1988 as a result of measures taken under
the SAP.
Most of the unemployed were city dwellers, as indicated by
urban
jobless rates of 8.7 percent in 1985, 9.1 percent in 1986,
9.8
percent in 1987, and 7.3 percent in 1988. Underemployed
farm
labor, often referred to as disguised unemployed,
continued to be
supported by the family or village, and therefore rural
unemployment figures were less accurate than those for
urban
unemployment. Among the openly unemployed rural
population,
almost two-thirds were secondary-school graduates.
The largest proportion of the unemployed (consistently
35 to
50 percent) were secondary-school graduates. There was
also a 40-
percent unemployment rate among urban youth aged twenty to
twenty-four, and a 31-percent rate among those aged
fifteen to
nineteen. Two-thirds of the urban unemployed were fifteen
to
twenty-four years old. Moreover, the educated unemployed
tended
to be young males with few dependents. There were
relatively few
secondary-school graduates and the lowered job
expectations of
primary-school graduates in the urban formal sector kept
the
urban unemployment rate for these groups to 3 to 6 percent
in the
1980s.
Data as of June 1991
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