One of the biggest challenges that would confront president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, as he takes over on May 29 is how to close up existing job gap in the country with latest figures from the National Bureau of Statistics showing about 1.2 million jobs created in the entire 2014, leaving yet some 600,000 to meet annual demand.
Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, still boasts of about 1.8 million new entrants into the job market annually, in addition to the existing 5.7 million job gap.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has put in quite a few structures to raise job numbers and creative inclusiveness, yet job creation dominates discourse as people struggle to understand why despite several years of impressive annual growth rates, unemployment and underemployment remain relatively high.
The NBS job data for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarters of 2014 indicate 240,871, 259,353, 349,343, and 369,485 jobs created in respective years.
The informal sector, dominated by individuals or businesses that are unregistered, operating with no accounts or no structures and often employing less than 5 employees and are usually household based enterprises, continues to generate most jobs, explaining why inclusiveness is yet not attained.
While the formal sector generated about 490,000 jobs, the public sector pulled just some 20,895 and the informal sector, 531,430 jobs in 2014.
“The informal sector continues to lead the way in new employment generated in the economy. In the four quarters of 2014, the informal sector contributed over 54 percent of total employment, making it the highest employer of labour in the economy,” the data office confirmed in the latest job report released on Tuesday.
NBS latest job figures indicate that in the fourth quarter for instance, a total of 369,485 jobs were created across all sectors of the Nigerian economy. Of these, 138,026 or 37.4 percent were recorded in the formal sector, 4,387 or 1.2 percent in the public sector and 227,072 or 61.5 percent in the informal sector. The formal sector job decreased 7,438 or 5.1 percent from the 145,464 jobs recorded in the third quarter of 2014.
The public sector jobs also went down by 1,348 or 23.5 percent from the total recorded in the third quarter, while the informal sector, however, increased from the previous quarter with 28,928 or 14.6 percent jobs.
A breakdown of the new jobs by economic sector shows that the education sector generated the most number of new jobs in the fourth quarter of 2014, with 54,729 jobs or 39,65 percent of the total, compared to third quarter 2014, in which manufacturing sector had the greatest jobs created with 54,446 jobs or 37.43 percent of the total.
Manufacturing sector ranked the second most dominant employer of new labour in quarter four, with 31.401 or 22.75 percent of all jobs. The wholesale and retail trade sector was the third most dominant, with 10,659 jobs or 7.72 percent of the new jobs total.
