By Emeka Anaeto, Economy Editor

A total of 1, 219, 052 jobs were created in the Nigerian economy by both public and private sectors in the year 2014. The figures as contained in the latest estimate of jobs creation report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows a marginal increase of 4.5 per cent against the total 1,163, 766 jobs created in 2013.

These estimates are the results of the Quarterly Job Creation Survey commissioned by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaboration with the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the President, National Planning Commission and the Federal Ministry of Labour & Productivity.

Employment generation being one of the pillars of the present administration’s Transformation Agenda.

The objective of the quarterly survey, according to NBS, is to track the number of jobs being created in the economy within a given period of time, provide multi-sectoral and policy relevant data on the employment-generating sectors, seasonality in employment and the labour market.

The findings are categorized into Formal sector jobs, Informal sector and Public sector jobs. Formal jobs refer to employment generated in establishments that employ 10 persons and above, or formal professional services that employ less than 10 persons.

The Informal jobs are those generated by individuals or businesses employing less that 10 or those businesses operating with little or no structures e.g. those in Agriculture and Wholesale and Retail Trade. While The Public Institutions are the Government Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs), Government Parastatals, Academic and Research Institutions at Federal, State and Local government levels.

The findings shows that the Informal sector is the main driver, with over 60 per cent contribution to the overall new employment profile while the Public Sector contributes marginally (less than 2 per cent) to the employment generation capacity of the economy. The formal sector where big corporations including multinationals belong contributed approximately 37 per cent.

In the period under review the Informal sector created 759,896 jobs showing a significant 11 per cent rise over 628,845 it generated in the preceding year. However a negative trend of steady decline was recorded from Q2. During the year under review the formal sector employed a total of 438,263 persons a marginal rise of less than one per cent from 432,720 employed in the previous year.

The significant feature of the quarterly report for the formal sector is a two- quarter consecutive decline with a massive decline from 145, 464 recorded in Q2 to 78,755 in Q3 followed by a further decline to 76,081 in Q4 2014 in that sector. In 2013 there was a steady rise in Q3 and Q4. No reason was given for this trend by the authorities.

Public Sector recorded a very abysmal performance in job creation in 2014 with just 20,893 jobs created, showing a massive decline against 102,201 it created in 2013. The Quarterly Job Creation survey is a nationwide survey, covering all 36 states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

A sample of 5000 establishments was taken across the country covering all sectors of the economy. This round of the survey, for which estimates are being reported, according NBS, achieved a response rate of 82.1percent from the establishments selected in the sample, which is very high by global standard.