Agriculture sector is the leading employer of labour, engaging 32.35 million persons out of 85.08 million that engaged in one form of activities as of Q3 2017, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) labour force statistics confirmed yesterday.
The NBS disclosed this in a “Labour Force Statistics Volume 2: Employment by Sector report for Third Quarter of 2017” released by the bureau yesterday in Abuja. The figure indicates 46.8% of the total employed population of 69.09 million. Next to agriculture in term of sectors providing highest employment is trade with 10.01 million persons or 14.5%, followed by manufacturing with 4.92 million of 7.0%.
Others are Services with 5.59 million persons or 8.1%, Professional, Scientific and Technical Services with 4.34 million persons or 6.3%, Education with 2.52 million persons or 3.7% and transportation and storage with 2.39 million or 3.5%. According to NBS, a labour force of 85.08 million in Q3 2017, 77.55 million were engaged in some sort of economic activity for at least an hour a week. According to the report, 7.53 million persons, according to NBS, were absolutely doing nothing during the quarter under review.
“We classify those working less than 20 hours a week and those doing absolutely nothing as unemployed, while we classify those working 20-39 hours or doing jobs not commensurate with their qualifications and skills as underemployed,” NBS said.
Shedding light on number of hours worked, it said: “Out of 8.46 million persons that work within 1-19 hours a week; 1.83 million or 21.67% work for pay/ wage; 5.84 million or 69.03% are self-employed working in agriculture (4.18 million or 49.44%) and non-agriculture related activities (1.65 million or 19.58%); 83,978 or 0.99% are paid apprentice and 703,240 or 8.31% are unpaid house workers.
“Under the working hours category, agriculture with 59.02% or 5.01 million persons dominates, followed by Trade (9.7%), Professional, Scientific and technical Services (7.0%).” Meanwhile, the report stated that more males worked full-time than female, while a higher percentage of female worked part-time between 20 and 39 hours and below 20 hours per week.