The Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) has warned that Nigeria must create at least 27 million new formal jobs within the next five years to prevent unemployment and underemployment rates from soaring to 30 per cent by the end of the decade.
This was contained in the NESG’s Jobs and Productivity Report, released on Monday and published on the group’s official website ahead of the 31st Nigerian Economic Summit (NES#31) in Abuja.
According to the report, Nigeria faces a “defining challenge” as its working-age population is projected to reach 168 million by 2030, placing immense pressure on the economy to generate sustainable, high-quality employment.
“Jobs and productivity are central to Nigeria’s economic development,” the report noted, adding that the creation of 27 million formal jobs is essential to absorb new entrants into the labour market and to transition millions currently engaged in informal, low-productivity work.
The group identified multiple constraints hindering large-scale job creation, including a shallow private sector base, skill mismatches, weaknesses in the education system, pervasive informality, and jobless growth that has failed to translate GDP expansion into meaningful employment.
The report also pointed to regulatory bottlenecks, inadequate infrastructure, and low business competitiveness as key factors limiting the private sector’s ability to expand and create jobs.
To address these issues, the NESG urged coordinated reforms across government and industry, emphasizing manufacturing, agriculture, digital technology, construction, and professional services as critical sectors capable of delivering large-scale employment if adequately supported.
“These sectors have the capacity to absorb labour from low-productivity areas and drive Nigeria’s structural transformation,” the report stated. “Collectively, they could contribute up to 35 per cent, or 9.7 million, of new formal jobs, with manufacturing alone accounting for about 21 per cent of projected job creation.”
The think tank also called for a national Jobs and Productivity Agenda, focused on improving labour productivity and stimulating private-sector growth through data-driven policy implementation and inter-agency collaboration.
It proposed a Nigeria Works Framework built on six strategic pillars: Skills for Productivity, Sectoral Engines of Job Growth, Enterprise-Led Growth, Data, Institutions and Accountability, and Productivity for Prosperity.
The NESG concluded that success would depend on strong political will, stakeholder collaboration, effective monitoring, and a long-term commitment to implementing key structural reforms.
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