The 93% Informal Reality: Reframing Nigeria’s Job Market
Nigeria’s low official unemployment rate masks a structural wage crisis. With 93% of workers in informal roles and under 15% holding wage jobs, working hard rarely means earning a living wage.
Articles
See our impact
This is where the Foundation’s actual track record lives, one entry at a time, as it happens. Two kinds of writing sit here: what QurateHQ, and later the Foundation itself, has actually done, with each milestone getting its own dated, sourced piece, and the Nigerian labour market, plainly explained, for readers who arrive here searching for the problem before they’ve ever heard of us.
Commitment
What we will report, when
Today the Foundation has no impact figures of its own. It has not yet run a cohort. Publishing a number now would mean inventing one or dressing an ambition as a result, so this is what we commit to publishing once there is something real to report.
Selected
How many, from where, by what criteria, for which pathway. Published within two weeks of a cohort being confirmed.
Completed
Completion rate, what each learner can now do, and the work produced.
Earning
At three, six and twelve months: wage employment, clients, sales, enterprises registered, and the number who have not yet earned.
Cost
Total cost per learner and cost per learner earning. The second figure is the one that matters and the one most organisations avoid.
What went wrong
Named in the report: an underperforming partner, a pathway with poor conversion, a cohort recruited badly.
Impact, attributed
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Coming up
The recurring editorial track
Example headlines for the ongoing series on Nigeria’s labour market, written to be found by the people searching for the problem, not just the people who already know the Foundation.
Nigeria's unemployment rate is 4.3%. Here's why that number is misleading.
- Labour market explainer, drawing on the NBS Labour Force Survey
What "informal work" actually looks like for young Nigerians.
- Labour market explainer
Underemployment, explained: why working doesn't mean earning.
- Labour market explainer
Why "informal" doesn't mean "unskilled."
- Programme thesis, on the gap between ability and recognised ability
What it actually costs to put a poor young person in front of a machine.
Programme economics, cost-per-learner transparency