The illusion of employment: When the numbers say Nigerians are working, but life says something else

THE NARRATIVE MATTERS®

THE ILLUSION OF EMPLOYMENT:
When the Numbers Say Nigerians Are Working, But Life Says Something Else

By Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan
A statistic can be technically correct and still tell an incomplete human story. That is perhaps one of the most important lessons in Nigeria’s continuing conversation about jobs. Official statistics may tell us that someone is employed. Yet that same person may be working only a few hours, earning too little to meet basic needs, juggling several informal activities simply to survive, or quietly searching for something more stable. On paper, there is employment. In life, there may still be economic insecurity.

This is not an argument against statistics. Good data matters. Governments cannot plan, businesses cannot invest intelligently, and citizens cannot hold institutions accountable without credible information. But statistics do not live only in spreadsheets. Once a number enters public conversation, it becomes part of a narrative, and narratives shape what people believe about progress, opportunity, and their own place within the economy.

Nigeria’s current labour-force methodology provides an interesting example. Under the National Bureau of Statistics framework, a person is considered employed if he or she worked for pay or profit for at least one hour during the previous seven days, or was temporarily absent from such work. To be classified as unemployed, a person must not be employed, must have actively searched for work, and must be available to work. NBS also separately measures time-related underemployment: employed people working at least one hour but fewer than 40 hours a week who want and are available to work more.

At first encounter, the one-hour threshold can sound startling. How can someone who worked for only an hour be described as employed? But this definition was not simply invented by Nigeria to produce a more flattering unemployment figure. It reflects international labour-statistics standards designed to capture different forms of work for pay or profit, including casual, temporary and irregular employment, while distinguishing employment from unemployment and other forms of labour underutilisation. The International Labour Organization explains that the criterion also enables employment and unemployment to remain mutually exclusive statistical categories. The problem, therefore, is not necessarily the statistic. The problem begins when a technical definition enters public conversation without enough context.

To a statistician, “employed” is a defined labour-market category. To the ordinary Nigerian, employment often means something much bigger: a dependable job, an income, some measure of stability and perhaps even the ability to plan a future. Those are not the same definitions. When institutions communicate one while citizens understand the other, a credibility gap can emerge even when the underlying statistic is methodologically sound.

Consider the young graduate earning intermittently from online assignments; the trader whose business generates just enough to keep going; the professional driving a ride-hailing vehicle while waiting for an opportunity in the field for which she trained; the artisan whose work depends entirely on whether customers appear that week; or the small-business owner who is technically self-employed but cannot yet pay himself a dependable income. They are all economically active, and their contribution should not be dismissed simply because their work does not resemble conventional salaried employment. But the more revealing question is whether that work is productive, sustainable and capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living.

Indeed, NBS itself cautions against interpreting unemployment in isolation. Its analysis of earlier Nigerian living-standards data suggests that poorer people may be unable to sustain extended periods of active job search because they need to work to provide for their households. NBS consequently points to job quality, including hours, occupation, and formality, as particularly important when examining the relationship between employment and poverty. In other words, low unemployment can coexist with significant economic hardship. A person can be statistically employed and still be economically vulnerable.

This is where leadership communication becomes critical. When an employment statistic improves, the temptation is understandable: announce progress. But numbers become dangerous to credibility when they are made to carry claims they were never designed to prove. An unemployment rate can tell us something important about participation in the labour market. It cannot, by itself, tell us whether people are earning enough, whether graduates are productively using their skills, whether work is secure, or whether families feel economically better off. Numbers measure activity. They do not always measure quality.

The wider economic picture reinforces the need for that distinction. The World Bank’s April 2026 Nigeria Development Update acknowledges meaningful progress in restoring macroeconomic stability: inflation has eased markedly, external and fiscal positions have strengthened, and economic growth has remained robust. Yet the same assessment says household incomes have not fully recovered and poverty remains high. There is no contradiction in those realities. An economy can improve at the macro level while millions of people remain economically vulnerable. Employment can expand while job quality remains weak. A person can be working and still be poor. The communication failure occurs when one part of the story is presented as though it cancels out the other.

For public institutions, the implication is not that positive labour statistics should be hidden or apologised for. It is that they should be communicated with interpretation rather than celebration alone. If unemployment falls, help citizens understand what is happening to underemployment, the kinds of work being captured, and, where reliable data exists, hours worked, productivity, earnings and job quality. Explain what the statistic tells us and, just as importantly, what it does not. Context does not diminish good news; it makes good news more credible.

The same lesson applies to businesses. Organisations routinely communicate impact through headline numbers: jobs created, people trained, entrepreneurs supported, communities reached. These figures are useful, but stakeholders increasingly ask a second question: what changed because of those numbers? A thousand people trained is not necessarily a thousand people economically transformed. Jobs created are not automatically decent or sustainable jobs. Reach is not necessarily impact. The stronger narrative connects activity to outcome rather than assuming that the first proves the second.

For communicators, this is where our responsibility becomes particularly important. Strategic communication is not the art of making numbers sound impressive. It is the discipline of helping people understand what those numbers mean. That requires enough context to prevent technically correct information from creating an unintentionally misleading impression. It also requires the confidence to acknowledge complexity. Credibility is rarely weakened by saying, “This is progress, but this is what remains unresolved.” More often, credibility is strengthened by it.

Nigeria needs credible statistics. But credible statistics also need credible storytelling. When people repeatedly hear that conditions are improving while their own circumstances tell them something different, they do not necessarily conclude that the methodology is sophisticated. They may simply conclude that somebody is not telling them the whole story. Once that happens, a statistical issue becomes a trust issue, and a trust issue quickly becomes a leadership and reputation problem.

Perhaps, then, the more useful question is not simply, “How many Nigerians are employed?” It is this: What kind of work are Nigerians doing, what kind of lives can that work sustain, and does the way we communicate the numbers allow people to recognise their own reality within them? A statistic can tell us something true without telling us everything that matters.

The message matters. The context matters. The credibility behind it matters. Because the narrative matters.

Dr. Omolaraeni Olaosebikan is a Strategic Communications and Reputation Management expert and Founder of The Narrative Matters®.