Unemployment rate hikes as banks’ staff strength shrinks by 2,999

Amid government efforts to reduce unemployment and poverty rates in the country, the latest National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report has revealed that unemployment in Nigeria is on the rise, as commercial banks staff strength reduced by 2,929 in the third quarter of 2019.

The NBS latest report tagged, ‘Selected Banking Sector Data: Sectoral Breakdown of Credit, ePayment Channels and Staff Strength data’ which was posted on its official website, showed that current banks staff strength was 101,435 in the third quarter of 2019, as against 104,364 stood in the second quarter of the year.

Considering the latest figure for the commercial banks’ workers strength, which indicated that it has declined by 2.81 per cent, during the period under review.

The report by the NBS also indicated that the staff reduced by 1,386 when compared to the 102,821 staff recorded during the correspondent period of 2018.

However, the report by the nation’s statistics body did not indicate how the reduction took place whether the staffs were all sacked or if some had retired.

The report also did not publish the names of banks most involved in staff reduction.

Meanwhile, the banking sector recorded a volume of 800,201,498 transactions valued at N42.76 trillion on Electronic Payment Channels within the three months of the third quarter (July – September), a report by the bureau has also shown.

“NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) transactions dominated the volume of transactions recorded. 298,988,572 volume of NIP transactions valued at N26.18trillion was recorded in Q3 2019,” it said.

The report also recorded N16.25 trillion as of the total value of credit allocated by the bank for the period under review.

According to NBS, Oil & Gas and Manufacturing sectors got credit allocation of N3.39 trillion and N2.57 trillion to record the highest credit allocations during the period under review.