Like GDP Re-basing, Like Unemployment Rate Revision

Despite rampant unemployment across the country, the Nigerian government says the proportion of people without jobs has plummeted dramatically from 28 per cent to just 6.4 per cent, meaning France has a higher percentage of unemployed people than Nigeria, and the United States and United Kingdom barely managed to beat Nigeria by a mark.

Unemployment rate in France stands at 10.6 per cent, while the U.S. and U.K. have 5.5 per cent each.

Nigeria’s new rate, unveiled this week by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as the outcome of a revised methodology for calculating unemployment, has angered many Nigerians.

The Statistician-General of the Federation, Yemi Kale, had announced on Thursday that Nigeria's unemployment rate, which stood at about 28 per cent by the 4th quarter of 2014, crashed to the new rate.

The revised methodology for computing unemployment statistics reduced Nigeria's official work hour benchmark from 40 to 20 hours a week, leaving the possibility of categorising millions of underemployed Nigerians "employed".

Work hours are the average number of hours a person is expected to complete in a week to be considered employed.

Some Nigerians have, however, described the new figure variously as "delusionary", "politically motivated", "unserious" and "fallacious".

Mr. Kale said if his bureau relied on the International Labour Organisation, ILO, which sees the "unemployed" as persons in the labour market who put in less than one hour at work per week, Nigeria's rate would have plunged further, and virtually all Nigerians would be seen as employed.

A revision of the ILO definition to Nigeria's initial 40 hours per week, Mr. Kale said, resulted in an unemployment rate of 23.9 percent in 2010, a figure many Nigerians dismissed as false.

But government experts considered that figure inadequate, arguing that persons who put in as much as 39 hours per week cannot be considered unemployed.

The NBS boss noted the difference between unemployed and "not having work", saying that only those within the working age of 15 and 64 years and looking for work, but cannot find, are considered unemployed.

"When those in the age brackets of 0-15 years and 65 and above are removed, all others in the economically active population who are not working are either not available or willing to work, not unemployed, like student and full-time housewives", Mr. Kale said.

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