Nollywood Creates The Most Jobs In 5years

Nollywood, the world’s second-largest film industry, employed close to 300,000 persons in 2021, the highest in five years, according to estimates.

The estimate was obtained using Jobberman Nigeria’s interview findings from filmmakers on the capacity that a single movie production can employ, which is an average of 100 persons from pre-production to post-production, and movie production data by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The latest figure by the NBS is for the first and second quarters of 2021, which shows that 416 and 635 movies were produced, respectively. Going by the run rate of previous years, it is estimated that an additional 854 and 1,073 movies were produced in the third and fourth quarters, which gives a total of 2,978 movies.

By multiplying the average of 100 persons by 2,978 movies produced in 2021, BusinessDay arrived at 297,800 persons that the industry might have employed. And using the same method, about 45,000 were employed in 2017, 56,500 in 2018, 70,000 in 2019, and 259,900 in 2020.

From the data above, the number of movies produced surged by 561.8 percent in 2021 compared to 2017. And the higher the number of movies produced, the more employment it generates for Africa’s biggest economy struggling with a youth unemployment rate of 42 percent.

According to Taiwo Ogunlade, an official at FilmOne, a Nigerian cinema company, we are getting to see the industry rise to become a key employer of labour for the Nigerian youth.