Rising Side-Hustle: How Cost-of-Living Pressures Are Redefining Work in Nigeria

For millions of Nigerians, the working day no longer ends when the office closes. At 5 pm, another shift begins.

A civil servant becomes a trader. A teacher starts private lessons. A software developer takes on another client. A banker sells products online. A technician accepts evening jobs. A graduate turns to logistics, delivery or freelance work.

Across Nigeria, the “side hustle” has become so common that it is often presented as a symbol of entrepreneurial energy.

But the numbers tell a more complicated story.

A significant number of Nigerians are not looking for a second income because they have too much free time. They are looking because one income is increasingly difficult to stretch across the cost of living.

And Nigeria’s labour-market data suggest that many of those looking for additional work cannot simply find another employer.

They have to create the job themselves.

That is the central finding emerging from an exclusive interview with economist and Director of CSAL Advisory, Aliyu Ilias, Ph.D., alongside National Bureau of Statistics labour-force data reviewed by Pinnacle Daily.

“I don’t think there’s enough side hustle in Nigeria,” Ilias told Pinnacle Daily.

His argument exposes a major weakness in Nigeria’s employment structure: the country has people willing to work additional hours, but it does not have a sufficiently developed part-time and flexible employment market to absorb them.

The result is a second labour market built largely on self-employment, freelancing, informal trading and project-based work.

The number that changes the side-hustle story

The NBS Nigeria Labour Force Survey provides one of the clearest pictures of the problem.

In Q2 2024, 8.7 per cent of respondents said they had looked for additional or other paid work during the previous four weeks. NBS Nigeria Labour Force Survey

But an even larger share 27.4 per cent said they would like to work more hours if additional hours were available.

That means the appetite for additional work is much larger than the number of people already operating a side hustle.

There is a sizeable pool of Nigerians saying, in effect:

“Give me more hours and I will work them.”

The problem is whether the economy has the jobs to offer those hours.

That is where the side-hustle economy enters.

Nigerians are creating their own second jobs

The structure of Nigeria’s labour market explains why.

NBS data show that 85.6 per cent of employed Nigerians were self-employed in Q2 2024, while only 14.4 per cent were employees. Informal employment accounted for 93 per cent of total employment. NBS Labour Force Survey

The second-job figures are even more striking.

Among Nigerians recorded as having a second job, 84.9 per cent were engaged in their own business activity, while only 2.1 per cent were employees in their second job.

Another 12.4 per cent were helping in a household business.

In other words, when Nigerians want a second job, they are overwhelmingly not walking into another employer’s office.

They are becoming their own employer.

This could be a trader selling goods after work, a freelancer taking clients at night, a student accepting logistics assignments, a mechanic doing private jobs or a salaried worker running an online business.

That distinction is crucial.

Nigeria does have a side-income economy.

But it does not yet have a sufficiently deep side-employment economy.

The second job is almost another half-time job

Perhaps the most revealing NBS figure is the amount of time Nigerians are spending on these additional activities.

Workers with second jobs reported an average of 23.3 hours a week on their second job. NBS Labour Force Survey

That is nearly another three eight-hour working days every week.

The average primary job, meanwhile, accounts for about 39.5 hours per week.

Put the two together and a person with both jobs is working approximately 62.8 hours every week.

That changes the language we use.

Calling it a “side hustle” makes it sound like a few hours of occasional activity.

For many Nigerians, it is not.

It is another working life.

And the economic consequences are significant.

More hours can mean more income, but they can also mean less sleep, less family time, less time for training and greater physical and mental exhaustion.

A labour market that increasingly depends on workers adding hours rather than increasing productivity has a structural problem.

Nigeria’s unemployment rate hides part of the story

Nigeria’s unemployment rate fell to 4.3 per cent in Q2 2024, according to the NBS. NBS Labour Force Survey

That number can easily create the impression that the employment problem is easing.

But unemployment alone cannot explain the Nigerian labour market.

A person who is working but wants more hours is employed.

A person earning too little to meet household needs is employed.

A person running a tiny business with irregular income is employed.

A person who works one job during the day and another at night is employed.

That is why the additional indicators matter.

The NBS recorded a 9.2 per cent time-related underemployment rate in Q2 2024. NBS Labour Force Survey

The broader labour-underutilisation rate was 13 per cent.

The message is therefore more complicated than the unemployment rate suggests.

Nigeria’s challenge is not simply that people cannot find work. It is that many people cannot find enough productive work.

The cost-of-living pressure behind the hustle

The economic incentive to search for additional income has also changed dramatically.

Nigeria’s minimum wage was raised to ₦70,000 per month in 2024, with the Federal Government saying the figure would be reviewed after three years. State House

But the minimum wage is only one side of the household-income equation.

The other side is the cost of goods and services.

The NBS has since rebased its Consumer Price Index, changing the CPI base year to 2024 and the expenditure reference period to 2023. The revised system now tracks 934 product varieties across 13 divisions. NBS CPI database

That matters because workers do not experience inflation as a percentage.

They experience it as the price of rice, transport, rent, electricity, school fees and other household expenses.

A lower inflation rate also does not mean prices have returned to their previous levels.

It simply means prices are increasing more slowly.

For households that have already absorbed substantial price increases, the pressure to supplement income can remain even as inflation moderates.

‘There may likely not be side jobs’

Ilias says Nigeria’s conventional work structure is partly responsible for the shortage.

“Most of what we do is mostly 8am or 9am to 5pm,” he said.

That arrangement makes it difficult for workers to find another structured employer willing to offer two or three hours of work in the evening.

A company may need a full-time employee.

Another may need a contractor for a specific project.

But the space in between regular, reliable and properly structured part-time work remains limited.

This is why, according to Ilias, people often turn to freelancing, technical services and informal businesses.

The side job is not necessarily found.

It is invented.

Logistics shows the gap

Ilias pointed to logistics and project-based assignments as an example.

A company may require additional workers for a specific task.

Students or other people looking for extra income can take the assignment.

But once the project ends, the income ends.

That is fundamentally different from a conventional part-time job with predictable hours and regular pay.

The difference is important for anyone trying to understand Nigeria’s side-hustle economy.

A project economy can create opportunities.

But it cannot automatically provide income security.

Workers may earn well when demand is high and nothing when demand disappears.

Technology is creating a different kind of worker

One sector stands out because it can break the physical boundaries of the 9-to-5 job: technology.

Ilias said people with technical skills can use their evenings to take on additional assignments.

A software developer can build another website.

A programmer can accept another coding project.

A graphic designer can work for another client.

A digital marketer can manage another company’s social-media account.

This is one reason technology is particularly attractive to Nigerians looking for additional income.

The work can be delivered remotely.

But the opportunity is not equally accessible.

A digital side hustle requires skills, a device, internet access, electricity and access to customers.

The World Bank has also identified digital skills as an increasingly important part of Africa’s evolving labour market, with its research examining millions of online job vacancies across countries including Nigeria. World Bank digital skills/jobs research

That means the digital economy can widen opportunity — but only for workers who can cross the skills and infrastructure barrier.

The informal economy is doing the heavy lifting

Nigeria’s enormous informal sector is effectively absorbing workers who cannot find the kind of flexible employment they want.

The NBS estimate of 93 per cent informal employment is therefore critical to this story. NBS Labour Force Survey

The informal economy offers something the formal economy often cannot: flexibility.

A person can start selling products with relatively little capital.

A driver can work when demand is available.

A tailor can accept private orders.

A teacher can tutor after school.

A technician can take weekend contracts.

A food vendor can sell in the evening.

But the informal sector also comes with insecurity.

There is generally no guaranteed salary, paid leave or employer-sponsored pension.

The same flexibility that allows people to enter the market can also leave them vulnerable.

Why some workers prefer projects

Ilias believes the economics of project work can explain why some Nigerians increasingly prefer flexible income streams.

He told Pinnacle Daily that some workers can earn between ₦15,000 and ₦20,000 on a project day.

If work were available for 20 days, that would amount to ₦300,000–₦400,000 in gross revenue.

But this should not be interpreted as a national average.

It is Ilias’s illustration of what some project workers can make, and it does not account for transport, materials, equipment or days when there is no work.

Even so, the comparison reveals why flexible work can be attractive.

A worker may calculate that several project assignments could produce more income than a low-paying monthly job.

But there is a trade-off.

The higher potential income comes with lower certainty.

The real dividing line is skills

The better the skill, the greater the potential access to profitable side work.

That is increasingly visible in Nigeria’s employment structure.

NBS data show that informal employment was particularly high among people with little or no formal education, while the informal employment rate among people with post-secondary education was substantially lower. NBS Labour Force Survey

That creates a skills divide within the side-hustle economy.

A software developer may access clients abroad.

An accountant may offer bookkeeping services.

A trained designer may sell services online.

A skilled electrician may take private contracts.

But someone without specialised skills may be restricted to low-margin trading or casual labour.

So when Nigerians are told to “get a side hustle,” the obvious question should be:

Which side hustle can they realistically access?

The demographic pressure is coming

Nigeria’s side-hustle problem is unlikely to disappear on its own because the labour force continues to expand.

The World Bank’s latest Nigeria material highlights the challenge of creating sufficient productive jobs as millions of Nigerians enter the labour market. World Bank: Nigeria

A 2026 World Bank publication puts the scale of the challenge more starkly, noting that 3–4 million young people enter Nigeria’s labour market annually while the labour force grows faster than the economy. World Bank 2026 Nigeria jobs report

That means Nigeria cannot depend on the traditional 9-to-5 employment model alone.

There simply will not be enough conventional vacancies.

The country needs a much broader ecosystem of productive enterprises, freelancing, part-time work, digital employment, small businesses and scalable entrepreneurship.

But it also needs those activities to generate enough income to move people beyond survival.

The side hustle can be a ladder — or a trap

There are two possible futures for Nigeria’s side-hustle economy.

In the first, side hustles become a pathway to entrepreneurship.

A freelancer builds an agency. A food seller opens a restaurant. A trader becomes a distributor.

A technician establishes a company. A software developer creates a technology firm.

That is the optimistic scenario. In the second, workers simply keep adding hours.

The salary remains inadequate. The side income remains precarious.

The worker becomes increasingly exhausted.

And the economy produces more activity without producing enough productivity.

That is the dangerous scenario.

A country cannot build broad prosperity by asking workers to work indefinitely longer hours.

At some point, income must rise because productivity rises.

Nigeria’s side-hustle economy needs a policy rethink

The government and private sector therefore need to look beyond the number of jobs being created.

The quality of those jobs matters.

The World Bank’s long-standing jobs research on Nigeria has emphasised the need for substantially more productive employment, noting that Nigeria faces a very large jobs challenge as its working-age population expands. World Bank Nigeria Jobs Report

For policymakers, that means creating conditions in which today’s side hustler can become tomorrow’s employer.

That requires:

Better electricity.

Affordable finance.

Reliable digital infrastructure.

Skills development.

Easier access to markets.

Lower barriers to formalisation.

Better transport and logistics.

And, critically, employment structures that allow businesses to hire workers flexibly without pushing them entirely into informality.

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Nigeria’s side-hustle culture is often celebrated as proof of resilience. And it is.

But resilience should not become an excuse for leaving structural problems unresolved.

The NBS data show that 27.4 per cent of respondents wanted to work more hours if those hours were available. NBS Labour Force Survey

That is not simply an entrepreneurship statistic. It is a statement about unmet labour demand.

Then there is the 8.7 per cent actively looking for additional paid work.

Then the 84.9 per cent of second-job workers creating their own businesses rather than becoming employees elsewhere.

Then the 23.3 hours a week spent on the average second job.

Put together, the numbers reveal a labour market that is operating beyond the conventional definition of employment.

People are not merely looking for jobs. They are looking for enough work. And increasingly, they are having to create it themselves.

For Ilias, Nigeria does not yet have enough genuine side-job opportunities.

Technology offers some of the strongest openings because digital work can cross the boundaries of the traditional working day.

The informal sector provides flexibility but not always security.

Project-based work can produce attractive earnings but lacks certainty.

And the formal economy continues to operate largely around the 9-to-5 model.

The result is a country where a worker can be fully employed and still be looking for work.

That may be the most important lesson from Nigeria’s side-hustle boom.

The question is no longer simply why Nigerians are hustling.

The question is why one job is increasingly not enough.

 

Indicator	Figure	What it tells us
Respondents looking for additional paid work	8.7%	A measurable share of Nigerians were actively seeking another source of paid work.
Respondents who wanted more working hours	27.4%	The demand for additional work was substantially larger than the number actively searching for another paid job.
Self-employed workers	85.6%	Nigeria’s employment structure is dominated by self-employment rather than conventional salaried jobs.
Informal employment	93%	The overwhelming majority of employment is outside the formal economy.
Second-job workers running their own business	84.9%	Most people with a second job create their own economic activity rather than work for another employer.
Second-job workers employed by another employer	2.1%	Very few second-job workers obtain their additional income through another conventional employer.
Average hours spent on second job	23.3 hours/week	A “side hustle” can represent almost another half-time job.
Average hours on primary job	39.5 hours/week	Combined with the second job, the workload reaches about 62.8 hours weekly.
Combined weekly workload for workers with two jobs	62.8 hours/week	Shows that additional work is often substantial, not merely occasional.
Time-related underemployment	9.2%	Shows that employment does not necessarily mean workers have enough hours of work.
Labour underutilisation rate	13%	Captures a broader measure of unused labour capacity than unemployment alone.
Unemployment rate, Q2 2024	4.3%	Shows why unemployment alone does not fully capture Nigeria’s labour-market pressures.
National minimum wage	₦70,000/month	Provides context for household income pressures and the search for additional earnings.
Young people entering Nigeria’s labour market annually	3–4 million	Shows the scale of the future employment challenge.

Sources: NBS Nigeria Labour Force Survey Q2 2024: https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/pdfuploads/NLFS_Q2_2024.pdf; State House: https://statehouse.gov.ng/labour-leaders-praise-president-tinubu-over-approval-of-n70000-minimum-wage-and-promise-review-after-three-years/; World Bank Nigeria: https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/country/nigeria; World Bank 2026 Nigeria jobs report: https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099060426120529325/pdf/BOSIB-3d7ed8de-a532-4e5b-8f46-75c1c0e5de1c.pdf.