Despite Nigeria’s unemployment rate rising to an all-time high of 23.1 percent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2018, nine states could reduce the rate in the period from Q3 2017, latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have shown.
According to the state unemployment data released by the statistics bureau on Friday, Rivers, Lagos, Enugu, Nasarawa, Imo, Ondo, Kaduna, Kogi, and Akwa Ibom recorded declines in their unemployment rates in Q3 2018 from a year earlier.
Rivers state’s unemployment rate contracted by 36.38 percent in the third quarter of 2018, representing 4.92 percentage points lower than 41.30 percent recorded in the corresponding period of 2017.
“The improvement can be traceable to the relative improvement in security situations in these states,” Ayodeji Ebo, Managing Director, Afrinvest Securities Limited, said. “This has attracted the set-up of more industries in these states.”
With this development, Akwa Ibom State overtook Rivers as the state with the highest unemployment rate in spite of a 0.2 percentage point decline in its unemployment rate to 37.72 percent from 37.91 percent.
According to Ebo, a lot of the companies shut down their operations at the peak of disruptions of oil production by militants. “Some of these companies have reopened their offices, hence reducing unemployment rate,” he said.
Other states that recorded high unemployment rate include Bayelsa, Abia, Borno, Kano, Cross River, among others.
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Lagos state’s unemployment rate fell by 3.72 percentage points to 14.55 percent, Enugu recorded a decline of 1.82 percentage points to 18.66 percent, while Nasarawa achieved 1.52 percentage points reduction to 27.39 percent.
Imo, Ondo, Kaduna, Kogi reduced their rates by 1.19, 1.17, 1.14, and 0.93 percentage points to 28.19 percent, 14.24 percent, 26.83 percent and 19.72 percent, respectively.
However, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kebbi, and Kano recorded the highest increase of 16.30, 14.22, 13.91, 11.92, 11.79 percentage points in unemployment rate for the period, respectively.
“It is sad that the reduction from these states is not enough to set off those states that have recorded static or increase in unemployment rate,” said Gbolahan Ologunro, an equity research analyst at Lagos-based CSL Stockbrokers Limited.
In the third quarter of 2018, Osun recorded the lowest employment rate of 10.07 percent, Oyo followed closely with 10.34 percent, while Ondo came third having recorded 14.24 percent unemployment rate.
Meanwhile, Lagos recorded the highest gains in net full-time employment of 740,146 jobs between Q3 2017 and Q3 2018; Rivers, 235,438 jobs; Imo, 197,147 jobs; Ondo, 142,514 jobs; Enugu, 122,333 jobs; and Kaduna, 118,929 jobs.
