Two years after, NBS to release labour force survey March 2023

• Designs methodology with W’Bank to run full unemployment report yearly

After two years of delayed unemployment and underemployment statistics, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said the Nigerian Labour Force Survey (NLFS) will be published in the first quarter of 2023.

The last unemployment report released in the last quarter of 2020 stood at 33. 3 per cent, while the underemployment report stood at 20.6 per cent.
This is just as the Bureau also mentioned that it would embark on data collection on household consumption expenditure on Nigerian Living Standard Survey (NLSS) in a few weeks time.

Statistics General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer of the NBS, Semiu Adeniran, disclosed this yesterday at the 2nd bi-yearly meeting of the National Consultative Committee on Statistics (NCCS), in Lagos, with the theme, ‘The Direct Implication of Sectoral Statistics in Curbing Inflation’.

He said the two surveys, in conjunction with the World Bank, when completed, would provide detailed household information and insights into labour and welfare conditions in Nigeria, which are arguably two of the issues most affected by inflation.

He said the NLSS would provide detailed information on household consumption, education, health, employment, housing conditions, assets, household enterprise and other key non-monetary indicators of welfare.

The NLFS, he said, is a strategic survey designed to collect and analyse labour market statistics for the country, including the generally understood and widely anticipated headline unemployment and underemployment rates.

While the unemployment and underemployment rates are very important figures that indicate the number of persons economically engaged, he said the NLFS also contains a lot more equally interesting and important information that offer useful insight into the health of the labour market in Nigeria.

These surveys, according to him, in addition to other data collection activities in the bureau will provide government with information required to address the impact of inflation and other conditions.

“There are two measures by which we measure poverty in the country; the monetary approach and deprivation approach. The monetary approach is the one we have been using over the years, which comes from the data we collected from NLSS.

“It is recently that Nigeria adopted the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index to look at income and other forms of poverty that come in deprivation in the areas of health, education, housing, environment and clean energy. These among others make people fall into poverty if they are depressed.

“For the Nigerian Labour Force Survey it is being conducted with the World Bank. Before it is used to produce employment and unemployment and other labour market statistics in the country but because of the gaps that we usually have to funding and other logistics in producing regularly these surveys on quarterly basis, we have designed a new methodology with World Bank such that this survey will run for a period of 12 months and at intervals on quarterly basis, we will be coming up with results of unemployment, underemployment and other indicators, not in full details.

“For instance, in each quarter, we are going to be having summary result for the country on unemployment, underemployment, people being unemployed for many years and skills acquisition of the unemployed on quarterly basis, but when we get at the 12th month, we are going to have a more comprehensive analysis of the survey, looking at the state, the urban and rural areas. The first report of this approach and new methodology will get the first quarter of March 2023,” he said.

Chairman, Governing Board, NBS, Dr. Kabiru Nakaura, said the need for good and reliable statistics in every society and across all tiers of government for informed decision and policy making is undisputable.

With the daunting challenges facing the NCCS in the performance of crucial tasks, he said it was time to review the strategy of the committee with the purpose of ensuring that the essence of data is not forgotten but rather given utmost consideration.

Director, Lagos Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, Tayo Oseni-Ope, said the meeting was to examine the statistical programmes of various agencies with a view to avoiding duplication, rendering necessary advice and training among others across the three tiers of government.