Nigeria’s unemployment rate rose to 37.7% in 2022. It is expected to rise further in 2023. This prediction was made by KPMG. The reason for the increase is the inflow of job seekers into the labour market. KPMG, a multinational consulting firm, made this observation in a report tagged “KPMG Global Economy Outlook report, H1 2023.”
Further, the report stated that unemployment will continue to be a challenge due to the slow growth of the economy. Also, the inability of the economy to absorb the 4.5 million new entrants into the Nigerian labour market annually adds to the problem.
Likewise, due to the limited investment from the private sector, unemployment will continue. Again, low industrialization fuels this fire more. Although the National Bureau of Statistics recorded an increase in the national unemployment rate from 23.1 percent in 2018 to 33.3 percent in 2020. However, there is an estimate that this rate has increased to 37.7 percent in 2022. Still, it will rise further, to 40.6 percent, in 2023.
In the same way, in 2024, the unemployment rate will grow to 43 percent. Then, inflation will accelerate to 20.3 percent in 2023 and 20.0 percent in 2024.KPMG noted that the incoming administration will face challenges. These challenges are characterized by fragile and slow economic growth and challenges in the foreign exchange market.
Additionally, government revenue remains inadequate to support much-needed expenditures. So, this leads to a high stock of debt and high debt service payments. Equally important, the Nigerian economy ended the past year with a GDP growth rate of 3.52 percent in Q4 2022. This is in comparison with 2.25 percent in Q3 2022, with growth averaging 3.10 percent over 2022.
Finally, the firm predicts a recovery in the oil sector, on account of measures being taken to tackle security issues, to drive the forecast of three percent growth in 2023.