Nigeria’s industrial sector remains the country’s strongest engine of employment, even amid persistent macroeconomic headwinds, reinforcing its central role in job creation, economic expansion and inclusive growth.
Despite foreign exchange volatility, rising inflation and elevated interest rates, industry showed notable resilience in 2025, with many firms signalling plans to expand their workforce.
According to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) Business Expectations Survey released in May 2025, companies across construction, mining and manufacturing reported positive hiring intentions. Construction recorded the highest employment outlook at 22.2 per cent, while mining and quarrying posted the strongest expansion expectations at 73.3 per cent.
Analysts say the figures highlight industry’s continued importance in addressing unemployment and strengthening Nigeria’s productive capacity.
Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, Director-General of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), Mr Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, described industry as a cornerstone of job creation, even under unstable economic conditions.
Oyerinde said sustaining employment momentum would require deliberate policies to diversify Nigeria’s industrial base, stabilise the macroeconomic environment and invest in workforce development.
“While some companies expanded their workforce in 2025, others froze recruitment or downsized due to economic pressures,” he said, noting that optimism captured in the CBN survey contrasted with projections from the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), which warned of potential labour market disruptions.
According to Oyerinde, sustaining employment growth will depend on improving the operating environment, enhancing regulatory efficiency, expanding access to affordable financing and prioritising skills development in emerging fields such as fintech, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
He warned that manufacturing employment remains particularly vulnerable to economic shocks. Data from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) showed the sector lost 18,935 jobs in the first half of 2025, up sharply from 10,891 job losses during the same period in 2024.
“Manufacturing is more exposed to inflation, foreign exchange volatility and weak consumer demand than most service-sector jobs,” he said, adding that the sector’s heavy reliance on imported inputs and high energy costs amplify its exposure to exchange-rate movements and power tariffs.
By contrast, the services sector continued to expand, widening the gap between services and real-sector employment in manufacturing and agriculture.
Founder of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE), Dr Muda Yusuf, said Nigeria’s industrial performance in 2025 exposed deep-seated structural constraints limiting growth and competitiveness.
He identified unfair competition from cheap imports—particularly from parts of Asia—as a major challenge undermining local manufacturing. Yusuf added that high borrowing costs and the lack of long-tenured financing restricted investment in capacity expansion and technology upgrades.
Weak consumer purchasing power, he said, further constrained manufacturers’ ability to pass on rising costs, leaving locally produced goods less competitive than imports.
Nevertheless, Yusuf acknowledged improvements in the macroeconomic environment over the past year, saying lessons from 2025 underscored the need for sustained stability, stronger trade and competition policies, improved access to long-term financing and measures to stimulate domestic demand.
An industrialist, Mrs Funlayo Bakare-Okeowo, also said Nigeria could unlock greater job creation through policies that stabilise costs, improve infrastructure and incentivise local production.
She called for coordinated fiscal and monetary policies to curb inflation, stabilise the naira and reduce exchange-rate volatility. She also urged improvements in roads, ports and logistics, alongside low-interest loans and credit guarantees for small and medium-scale enterprises.
“There should be incentives for job-intensive industries, export rebates for manufacturers and stronger partnerships between government, industry and training institutions to reskill workers for automation,” she said.
Analysts concluded that Nigeria’s 2025 industrial experience reflects both the sector’s capacity to absorb labour and the structural weaknesses constraining its impact. Key lessons include the centrality of macroeconomic stability, the burden of energy and infrastructure costs, and the need for a balanced, coherent industrial policy to sustain industry-led job creation.
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Godwin Okafor is the Publisher & CEO of Naija247news Media Group LLC, an independent investigative news platform delivering accurate, data-driven reporting on Nigerian and global politics, economy, finance, and business. Founded in October 2010, Naija247news specializes in developmental journalism, providing timely insights and analysis to readers across Nigeria and the diaspora.
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