The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has disclosed that 20 percent of the full-time workforce in Nigeria lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The NBS made this known in a study jointly conducted with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and released on Tuesday.
The report centred on the impact of COVID-19 shock on businesses in almost Nigeria.
According to the report, which 3,000 businesses from the formal and informal sectors across major industries were interviewed, 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.
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The report reads: “While there have been promising signs of recovery this year, COVID-19 has had an outsized socio-economic impact on Nigeria,”
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“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 percent compared to 15 percent among informal enterprises.”
