THE WORLD OF UNEMPLOYMENT; 

A FOCUS ON NIGERIA 

Since the early 1970s, youth unemployment in industrialized market economies has become a much greater problem for all categories and not just for the high-risk groups at the Nigerian society. This group includes educationally disadvantaged migrants, ethnic minorities, disabled youths and young women. Unemployment has increased and the periods of unemployment  itself has become longer.

The beginning of the current youth unemployment problem in industrialized market economies can be traced to the general slowdown in demand and economic activities in the mid-1970s. The situation was aggravated by the 1973 crude oil shock and the subsequent slide into a global recession. The situation was aggravated by demographic factors such as the entry into labour market of a substantial number of “baby boom” children. 

According to statistics by the Global Employment Trend for Youths in 2004, youths of 15-24 years old make up 25 percent of working age population. This group also constitutes 47 percent of the total 186 million people that were out of work in the world in 2003. A Report on the State of Youth Employment in 2002 reveals that between 47–51 percent in the World, and 64.61 percent of Nigerian youths were unemployed during this period. This included the primary, secondary and to some extent, tertiary education graduates who had received enough theoretical education to alter their aspirations and values, but not enough practical education and training to provide them with marketable skills.

The World Bank has projected that by 2025, 48 percent of young people that are between the ages of 15 and 24 in developing countries like Nigeria will be unemployed. This would make people interpret the already chronic problem of youth unemployment regarding a need to expand the capacity of labour markets to absorb more new entrants into productive employment. No doubt, the ability of labour market to respond to the employment needs of youths will remain a key issue in Nigeria, even in the next century.

In Nigeria, unemployment was not a major concern before the oil crisis in 1973. E.R. Fapohunda (1982) has examined the effects of the oil crisis in 1973 on unemployment situations and concluded that Nigerian socio-political planners believe that high levels of employment would automatically flow from a high rate of economic growth. Thus, the planners did not explicitly include in the First and Second National Development Plans/Programmes in 1960 and 1970 specifically designed activities to generate high levels of employment.

Be that as it may, following the economic recession of the 1980s, it became apparent that the days of automatic “white-collar” jobs immediately after the University education had disappeared unceremoniously. As Muhtar (2001) observes, in the past two decades of our independence, the labour market opportunities facing each tertiary graduates were wide and varied. At that time, it was customary that each graduate had at least three jobs to choose from prior to convocation. Thus, the movement from school-to-job was virtually automatic. Unfortunately, this easy connection between the world of learning and the world of work is now a history.

The analyze the implications of unemployment in Nigeria. They concluded that “there is evidence of malfunctioning of the labour market”. While there is shortage of persons with skills strategic for development, there is also unemployment and underutilisation of available human resources.

The economic environment today is a far cry from what it was some years ago. The evolution is as fast as that, and the pace is even getting faster by the day. The era of reliance on paid employment is gone. The state of the economy today shows that self-employment is the immediate answer.

As earlier stated, the objectives of this paper are to examine NDE employment strategies and its contributions to the socio-political and economic development of Akwa Ibom State, in particular, and Nigeria, in general. We shall now turn to the activities of NDE.