75.9m unemployed in third quarter, says NBS

IN the third quarter (Q3) 2015, the labour force population which refers to those within the working age population willing, able and actively looking for work increased to 75.9 million, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

According to Unemployment and Under Employment 2015 Q3 report made available to The Guardian yesterday, the figure represents 2.60 percent rise in number of unemployed which stood at 74.0 million in Q2 2015.

The bureau said this means 1,929,800 economically active persons within the ages of 15 and‐64 entered the labour force between July 1 and September 30 2015.

“This consisted of newly qualified graduates, new entrants into the economically active population (became 15 in Q3 2015) actively seeking work and previous members of the economically active population that choose not to work for whatever reasons in earlier periods (number of those not willing to work in the economically active population declined to 28.3 million in Q3 2015 from 29.5 million in Q2 2015 meaning about 1.3 million people in the working age population that choose not to work in Q3 decided to work in Q3 2015 thereby adding to the labour force).

“Within the same period, the total number in full time employment (did any form of work for at least 40hours) increased by 840,773 or 1.52 percent. The sharp growth in the labour force and especially in the number of those in full time employment is largely as a result of the beginning of the planting season resulting in a huge amount of rural farmers’ previously underemployed suddenly working longer hours,” the bureau said.

The survey showed that an economically active or working age population of 104.3 million and labour force population of 75.9 million, this means 28.37 million persons within the economically active or working age population decided not to work for various reasons in Q3 and consequently are not part of the labour force and cannot be technically considered unemployed even though they are not working.

The NBS also maintained that the number of underemployed in the labour force (those working but doing largely menial work or jobs not commensurate with their qualifications or not fully engaged and merely working for few hours) during the review quarter however, decreased slightly by 365,593 resulting in a decrease in the underemployment rate to 17.4 percent in Q3