Nigeria’s unemployment rate now stands at 23.1 per cent, up from the previous rate of 18.8 per cent released in the third quarter of 2017, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday.

Partime employment/underemployment slowed to 20.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2018 from 21.2 per cent in the third quarter of 2017.

Although there was a marginal increase in the number of people employed from to 69.09 million in Q3 2017 to 69.54 million in Q3 2018, the total number of people unemployed upped from 17.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 20.9 million in the third quarter of 2018.

The latest figures are grimmer than what the government has been touting.

A presidential spokesman told Channels Television that the chief executive of the statistics office told a meeting of cabinet members last week that analyses of job rates were largely focused on white-collar jobs.

“The had concentrated analysis overtime on white-collar jobs,” Garba Shehu said.

“They had not taken cognisance of job creation in Agriculture.”

Shehu argued that the figures collected by NBS in recent part had been unfair to president Muhammadu Buhari strides in job creation in Agriculture.

“We have created at least 12 million jobs in the area of agriculture,” Shehu added.