Nigeria's Informal Economy
93% of Workers are Informal
Official NBS data on informal employment in Nigeria — the world's most informally employed large economy. Broken down by gender, location, and quarterly trend.
All Workers
93%
informal — Q2 2024
Women
96%
informal — near-total
Rural Workers
97.5%
informal
Urban Workers
90%
still informal in cities
Informal Employment Trend — Q4 2022 to Q2 2024
Overall Female Male Rural
Informal Rate by Segment — Q2 2024
Across every segment, informality dominates. Rural women are almost universally informal.
Editor's Insight
What 93% informality means for Nigeria's economy
93% is not a developing-world anomaly — it's a structural feature
Nigeria's informal economy isn't a symptom of underdevelopment waiting to be fixed — it IS the economy. Traders, artisans, okada riders, suya sellers, market women — this is how most Nigerians earn a living. Any economic policy that ignores the informal sector ignores 93% of Nigerian workers.
Women are almost entirely shut out of formal work
96% of working Nigerian women are informally employed. This isn't choice — it reflects barriers: lack of access to capital, discriminatory hiring, childcare burdens, and educational gaps. A woman with a formal salary and benefits in Nigeria is genuinely an outlier.
Even cities can't formalize workers
Urban informality at 90% is striking — Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, Nigeria's most developed cities, still have 9 in 10 workers outside formal employment. This explains low PAYE tax revenue, poor pension coverage, and the cash economy that dominates even Nigeria's biggest markets.
The rate hasn't moved — and it won't without manufacturing
Informality has stayed between 92–93% across every quarter measured. No policy has shifted it meaningfully. The only known route to mass formalization historically is manufacturing-led industrialization — exactly what Nigeria abandoned in the 1980s oil boom and hasn't rebuilt since.
About this data
Data sourced from the NBS Labour Force Survey, republished via the Nigeria SDG Data Portal (SDG Indicator 8.3.1). Informal employment covers workers without employment contracts, social protection, or paid leave. Figures.ng republishes official NBS data for every Nigerian.