Chart of the week
Namibia's unemployment rate is estimated to be 43.0% in 2024, placing it among the highest known unemployment rates worldwide.
Since independence, Namibia has seen no material improvement in its unemployment rate, which spiked to over 30% at the start of the century and has consistently hovered around the 30-35% mark. Unfortunately, no data beyond 2018 has been made available by Namibia's official statistics agency, despite previously collecting this data nearly every year since 2008. However, according to Afrobarometer data, Namibia's unemployment rate has risen to a (quite unbelievable) 43.0% in 2024.
Unemployed Namibians find it extremely difficult to secure a job. The Namibia Labour Force Survey of 2018 reported that three in four unemployed jobseekers had been out of work for more than a year. This pattern is consistent across rural/urban and male/female respondents, with 70-76% reporting this length of unemployment.
Public confidence in the government’s ability to create jobs has dropped to an all-time low in 2024, with nearly 90% believing the government is performing either "fairly badly" or "very badly" in this area. Confidence in other areas – such as stabilising prices, reducing inequality, addressing educational needs, improving basic health services, fighting corruption, and more – has also declined to all-time lows in 2024.
In each round of the Afrobarometer survey, unemployment remains, by far, the issue that the public most urgently believes the government must address. These drops in confidence, alongside other statistics recording rising public unrest and discontent, correlate strongly with diminishing public trust and support for the government.
Afrobarometer's national partner in Namibia, Survey Warehouse, regularly collects unemployment statistics (and more) using nationally representative, random, stratified probability samples of 1 200 adult citizens. A sample of this size provides country-level results with a margin of error of ±3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
Since independence, Namibia has seen no material improvement in its unemployment rate, which spiked to over 30% at the start of the century and has consistently hovered around the 30-35% mark. Unfortunately, no data beyond 2018 has been made available by Namibia's official statistics agency, despite previously collecting this data nearly every year since 2008. However, according to Afrobarometer data, Namibia's unemployment rate has risen to a (quite unbelievable) 43.0% in 2024.
Unemployed Namibians find it extremely difficult to secure a job. The Namibia Labour Force Survey of 2018 reported that three in four unemployed jobseekers had been out of work for more than a year. This pattern is consistent across rural/urban and male/female respondents, with 70-76% reporting this length of unemployment.
Public confidence in the government’s ability to create jobs has dropped to an all-time low in 2024, with nearly 90% believing the government is performing either "fairly badly" or "very badly" in this area. Confidence in other areas – such as stabilising prices, reducing inequality, addressing educational needs, improving basic health services, fighting corruption, and more – has also declined to all-time lows in 2024.
In each round of the Afrobarometer survey, unemployment remains, by far, the issue that the public most urgently believes the government must address. These drops in confidence, alongside other statistics recording rising public unrest and discontent, correlate strongly with diminishing public trust and support for the government.
Afrobarometer's national partner in Namibia, Survey Warehouse, regularly collects unemployment statistics (and more) using nationally representative, random, stratified probability samples of 1 200 adult citizens. A sample of this size provides country-level results with a margin of error of ±3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
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