The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says 42% of Nigerians have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was made known in a recently released report by the NBS based on a survey carried out between April to May 2020.
In its report titled “COVID-19 IMPACT MONITORING”, the NBS said; “In order to track the impacts of the pandemic, the National Bureau of Statistics implemented the Nigeria COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (COVID-19 NLPS) on a nationally representative sample of 1,950 households.
“The most widely reported shock experienced by households was an increase in prices of major food items faced by 85 percent of households since the outbreak compared to only 19 percent between January 2017 and January 2019.”
The NBS survey further revealed that while seventy-nine percent of households’ income has decreased since March 2020, the worst affected sectors in the Nigerian economy include commerce and agriculture.
The Bureau furthermore added that the economic shock experienced by Nigerians after the COVID-19 outbreak exceeds shocks experienced between 2017 and 2019.
Nigeria was among the first countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to identify cases of COVID-19 and has recorded over 11,000 cases since its index case in late February.
The country’s economy by 1.87% in Q1 2020, the slowest in over a year, on non-oil sector weakens
