20% of Nigeria’s workers lost jobs in 2020 – NBS

At least two of 10 employed Nigeria lost their jobs last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a study by the National Bureau of Statistics has shown.

This study, it said on Tuesday, was conducted in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The report, which centred on the impact of COVID-19 on business enterprises in Nigeria, interviewed almost 3,000 businesses from the formal and informal sectors across major industries.

According to the report, the pandemic affected the nation’s workforce and caused an increase in the unemployment rate — moving from 27 percent to 33 percent between Q2 2020 and Q4 2020.

The report read in part, “While there have been promising signs of recovery this year, COVID-19 has had an outsized socio-economic impact on Nigeria.

“Businesses resorted to laying off employees to survive, and shutdowns of enterprises severed crucial livelihood lines for households that depended on them for income, coupled with the lack of new business opportunities and reduction in capital investment further limiting new job prospects.

“Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the median full-time staff strength of formal and informal enterprises stood at 12 and five, respectively.

“During the pandemic, these figures declined and stood at ten and four for formal and informal enterprises, respectively. Across the sample, this results in 20 percent of the initial full-time workforce losing their jobs during this period.

“Among the formal enterprises, this figure is slightly higher at 21 per cent compared to 15 per cent among informal enterprises.”

The report added that while 58 per cent of businesses maintained staff strength, 28 per cent lost up to 50 per cent of their initial workforce, with the remaining 14 per cent losing more than 50 per cent of their initial workforce.

It added that the informal enterprises were more affected, resulting in 62 per cent of the total job losses.

At the unveiling of the report, the NBS boss, Simon Harry, said the survey results were very important as they contained important information that could guide policymakers in their interventions to mitigate the negative socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 in the country.

Nigerian UNDP Resident Representative, Mohamed Yahya, said that the report findings highlighted the complex challenges the economy had continued to face because of COVID-19.

He said that it also raises awareness into the ramifications of the pandemic on the business environment in Nigeria, including its impact on production, sales, revenues and the labour force, with details that were far more granular than were normally available and offering critical insight into where interventions should be targeted