Data on the rate of unemployment in Nigeria will no longer be released scantly and sporadically, but well aggregated and quarterly. This is according to the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Prince Adeyemi Adeniran.
Adeniran said this on Saturday in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, at the flag-off of the Training of Enumerators (ToE) for the Nigerian Labour Force Survey (NLFS) 2022/2023. The event was organised by the bureau and its technical partner, the World Bank.
He explained the bureau will employ new and improved data collection methodologies to ensure the data it releases at the end of the survey is reliable and meets global standards. Adeniran also stated that the new unemployment data that will be released after the survey will include indicators that were previously excluded.
“One critical issue we have with the labour force is continuity. The approach we are using to collect data now with the support of the World Bank and other critical stakeholders in Nigeria will allow us to be able to release the labour market data, specifically, the unemployment rate on a quarterly basis. However, it will not be for all the indicators and the states, but, basically, we will release unemployment figures for the whole country on a quarterly basis without disturbance,” said Adeniran.
He further explained that in the new instrument it has deployed for the data collection, “we have indicators like those who have been looking for work for many years, so we take the duration of unemployment; those that are tired because they have searched for many months or years; as well as the qualifications and skills our young graduates have to enable them to get paid and decent employment, among others.”
The stats chief also assured that there will be adequate disaggregation of data to give the reports it will churn depth provide adequate data that will help the government to plan and implement policies that would engender development.
“At the end of the year, because the new data collection approach we are using now will allow us to collect the data for 12 months, of which at the end of these 12 months, we will have enough sample size to be able to disaggregate the data by states, gender, level of education, location (urban or rural) and more.”
Also speaking, the representative of the World Bank at the event, Jonathan Lain, all over the world, there is an increasing need for timely, reliable data, noting that the data that would be gotten from the survey will be very huge implications on the development of Nigeria, given that policymakers will always consult the data while formulating policies.
“The improved questionnaire to be used will capture a lot of data that had not been captured in the past,” he said.
The Statistician-General of Oyo State, in an address during the event, admonished enumerators to show commitment and help make the exercise a success, assuring the NBS and the enumerators who will work in the state of the government’s support.
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