eku_bear:

Well, certainly being dead-last despite being a major oil-producing state is more compelling from a news perspective than under-performing.  Though ultimately it doesn't seem to make much sense to use media coverage of the survey itself to then judge how valid the survey is, right?

True.

And just as plausible that any systematic errors in fact understate unemployment.

Well I wasn't suggesting error, but fabrication.

From what i understand, one of the better farming states in the nation.

Ok. That would explain it, then. Successful/widespread farming combined with low population would result in that kind of statistic.

An interesting hypothesis. Sorta wonder why "they" would do it in such a way to make the VPs state look terrible, though.

Well, common knowledge amongst southerners or Nigerians in general that Bayelsa was doing terribly in terms of development would make it easier for the public to believe such statistics were valid if Bayelsa was put in that position, while serving the purpose of making the list more balanced (as it is now) between North and South. It might sound conspiracy theory-like, but I'm really just suspicious of all these relatively lower to medium unemployment rates for states with relatively abysmal GDP stats.

^---- Underemployment might be the issue, perhaps? Maybe the raw employment rate in say State X is very low, but the # of hours worked, or $/hour isn't as much as say some southern state with a higher unemployment rate.

I vaguely remember reading something about this (underemployment, that is) in a report by some international agency regarding Nigeria. Don't have the reference handy atm though.

Underemployment is a possibility, I guess.


I don't know what the situation on the ground is and don't know too much about all the states, but the stats still seem kind of fake to me.