Nigeria, in a state of employment crisis keep getting worst even from the first quarter of 2016, with unemployment rate that keep rising to 12.1 per cent, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, said this on Friday, Premium Times reports.
The bureau said in its latest Unemployment Watch report that between December 2015 and March 2016, the population of unemployed Nigerians increased by 518 000 to over 1.45 million.
Economically active or working age population, the NBS said, increased from 105.02 million in the fourth quarter of 2015 to 106 million by the end of March 2016.
However, actual population of people willing, able and actively looking for work increased by 1.99 per cent, from 76.9 million in fourth quarter of 2015 to 78.4 million in the first quarter of 2016.
The government’s strategy, it was gathered, is to reset the economy towards the path of sustainable growth, with the N6.06 trillion 2016 expansionary budget being targeted to kick start the strategic programme of infrastructure investment needed to unlock the significant potential of economic growth, according to Today.
A top official of the government’s economic team disclosed that as expected, the economy has softened, adding that the current administration had previously highlighted what he described as the negative economic trajectory inherited from the previous government’s borrowing that was not invested for growth.
