The body in charge of data gathering in Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 21.7 million Nigerians are now unemployed.
According to its Labour Force Statistics report released on Monday, the number of unemployed Nigerians went from 20.93 in 2018 to 21.76 million in the second quarter of 2020.
The implication is that over 17 million Nigerians have become unemployed since December 2014, while the total working age population has grown by almost the same number in those six years.
For the first time in the history of the revised NBS unemployment reports, the number of people in the labour force willing to work dropped.
According to NBS data, there are now at least 10 million people in the labour force unwilling to work.