Key figure

Nigeria Unemployment Rate Today

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Direct answer

Nigeria's latest official unemployment rate is 4.3%.

That is the official unemployment rate from the National Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey for Q2 2024. The same release put unemployment at 5.1% for women, 5.2% in urban areas, and 6.5% for people aged 15 to 24.

Overall rate

4.3%

Q2 2024 official rate

Women

5.1%

Higher than the male rate

Urban areas

5.2%

Above the rural rate of 2.8%

Age 15-24

6.5%

Highest age-band unemployment rate

What this means

Low on paper, but still a strained labour market

A 4.3% unemployment rate can look surprisingly low for Nigeria, but the official survey uses the modern ILO method, which counts people as employed if they worked even briefly in the reference week.

That means the unemployment rate is only one part of the labour story. Underemployment, informal work, and weak earnings still matter a lot.

In simple terms: official unemployment is lower than many people expect, but the labour market is still far from comfortable.