Abia State currently has the 4th highest unemployment rate (31.6%) in Nigeria (NBS, 2018) with the youth unemployment rate almost double that rate With a population of over 3.7 million people as of 2016, government intervention will do well to adopt a demand-led approach to solving its youth unemployment problem and ensure that its programs are responding well to the evolving dynamics of the State’s Labor market. This approach can be embedded in current government interventions like the Education for Employment Scheme launched in 2015, by ensuring that stakeholders from labor demand and supply sides work together to tackle this hydra-headed problem head-on.
Background and Context
Nigeria continues to suffer from a “labor market trifecta” of jobless growth, an expanding population, and unemployable youth. Despite decades of reasonably steady economic growth, the Nigerian economy has simply not generated the jobs required to sustain its large and growing youth population. It is worthy to note that more than 55.4% of the youth in the labor force isis either unemployed or underemployed as of Q3 2018 and the challenge of youth unemployment cuts across all categories of youth, regardless of their educational attainment (NBS, 2018). Skills mismatch remains a prime challenge confronting Nigeria’s workforce development with a marked misalignment of labor supply and labor demand. It is also the case that unemployment continues to be significantly higher amongst women (26.6%) compared to men (20.3%). In Abia State, the sense of urgency in addressing the challenge of youth unemployment is very clear; recognizing that a large share of youth in transition have yet to attain decent employment, and a much larger share of those employed are losing their jobs and having extreme difficulties finding new ones in this post-COVID19 new era. Unless they succeed, yet another generation of productive human capital will remain underutilized and a cycle of poverty will continue.
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