New "stats" on the block

...or more like a facelift

It’s almost the end of the month!! Happy salary week to our salary earners. Hope getting back to work after a long holiday was not so hard. 

In our article on the KPMG report, we highlighted that the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had not uploaded recent data on unemployment as they had not conducted a national labour survey since 2020. The reason being an update to their methodology. Well, they recently assured the Nigerian population through a tweet that a report would be released in the second quarter of the year.

Earlier this week, the NBS released a notice on a new indicator that would be added to the labour force report to be released later this year, as well as modifications to current indicators. The first is an indicator called temporary absence, this was not captured in the bureau’s previous reports but going forward it would capture employed individuals who do not work for up to seven days due to leave of absence or time arrangements of work offered.

The second to fourth were updates and revisions on previously reported indicators. These revisions were based on recent guidelines from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). So previously, employed individuals were people between the ages of 13 and 63 who worked for 20 hours or more for pay or profit while the new indicator would be employed individuals from the ages of 15 and above who receive pay or profit within any number of hours. 

Unemployed persons were those between 15-63 that did not have work or worked for less than 20 hours but with the revisions, unemployed persons are those who are 15 and above that are available for work but not employed. Finally, underemployed persons were those who worked between 20 to 30 hours in a capacity below their average abilities but with the revisions, underemployed persons are those who work between 1 to 39 hours and are available for more work.

So what?

First off, for a country that tried its very best to withhold its population access to Twitter, it's pretty funny that its agencies now rely on the platform to share important information. 

The decision to adopt the guidelines of the ILO may prove commendable as it ensures best practices for data captured and reported. Although it is inappropriate that an economy as big as the Nigerian economy was relying on 2020 data for unemployment, this is a step in the right direction. With the advent of remote jobs, more people skip being in an office for 8-9 hours of the day to being home and providing productive results and deliverables to their employers within fewer hours. The introduction of a new indicator makes decision-making more encompassing because it is based on a holistic view of the Nigerian labour force.