The World Bank has reported that Nigeria’s unemployment crisis in recent times is the worst in the nation’s history.
The report, which raised an alarm over the nation’s rising unemployment situation was published by the World Bank with support from the Korea World Bank Partnership Facility (KWPF) and the Rapid Social Response (RSR) trust funds.
According to the research paper, the nation’s expanding working-age population combined with scarce domestic employment opportunities is creating high rates of unemployment, particularly for youth.
This situation has also been worsened by the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Between 2010 and 2020, the unemployment rate rose five-fold, from 6.4 percent in 2010 to 33.3 percent in 2020.
The rise in unemployment rates has been particularly acute since the 2015- 2016 economic recession and has further worsened as COVID-19 led to the worst recession in four decades in 2020” the paper read in part.
The unemployment rate is defined nationally as the percentage of the labour force population who could not find at least 20 hours of work in the reference period, which the paper says was significantly higher for youth (42.5 per cent) compared to non-youth (26.3 per cent). It was also discovered that women are particularly vulnerable in Nigeria’s labor market. “Compared to 46.4 percent of the male population who are fully employed, only 40.6 percent of women are fully employed
