How to Choose a Career in Nigeria: A Guide for SS Students and Parents

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Every Nigerian child hears it. But very few get real help answering it. Many end up studying a course because a parent, a friend or a cut-off mark chose it for them.

This guide is for SS students and their parents. It shows what the job market really wants, how crowded different courses are, and simple questions to help you choose well.

First, what the job market is doing

The world is changing fast

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 asked employers around the world what's coming by 2030. It found employers expect nearly 40% of the skills needed on the job to change by 2030. By our sum, that's about 2 in every 5 skills.

The fastest-growing jobs, by percentage, include:

• Big data specialists
• Fintech engineers
• AI and machine learning specialists
• Software developers
• Security specialists
• UI and UX designers

And the fastest-shrinking ones include bank tellers, data entry clerks, cashiers, and administrative assistants. Jobs that a computer can do on its own are disappearing.

What Nigerian employers say

A Lagos State employment agency looked at the Nigerian part of the same report. Among the Nigerian employers asked:

• AI and machine learning specialists had the biggest expected growth, with 82% net growth.
• Data analysts and scientists came next, at 41%.
• 87% expected to need more network and cybersecurity skills, compared with 70% worldwide.

Most Nigerians work for themselves

Here's a fact many parents don't know. Nigeria's statistics bureau, NBS, says 93% of employed Nigerians work in the informal sector, and 85.6% are self-employed. By our sum, that's more than 9 in every 10 workers.

The official unemployment rate looks low, at 4.3% in mid-2024. But under the method NBS adopted in 2023, working just one hour a week counts as employed. So the low rate hides how many people don't earn enough.

What does this mean for your child? Whatever career they choose, they'll likely need to find or create work, not just wait for a job. Skills like selling, managing money and using digital tools help in every career.

How crowded is each course?

JAMB's own figures for 2025 show how hard it is to get into different courses:

• Law: 58,033 applications for 10,874 places. By our sum, that's over 5 applicants per place, and only about 1 in 6 were admitted.
• Medicine, pharmacy and health: 433,298 applications for 148,486 places, almost 3 per place.
• Engineering, technology and environment: 161,501 applications for 111,422 places, about 1.4 per place.
• Education: 146,418 applications for 198,661 places. By our sum, there were more places than applicants.

JAMB itself says many good candidates miss admission because they insist on a few popular courses like medicine, nursing and law. In 2025, 24,081 candidates who scored between 250 and 279 still weren't admitted.

So a high score isn't enough. Choosing wisely matters too.

What happens after graduation

An older but useful study, the 2018 Nigerian Graduate Report by Stutern, surveyed 5,219 graduates:

• 28.9% were unemployed.
• About 60% earned less than ₦50,000 a month in their first job.
• Only about 10% had studied one of the ten courses with the best job outcomes.

Jobberman, summing up that report, said:

"majority of graduates are not studying courses that would make them employable" Jobberman, on the Stutern graduate report

The figures are from 2018, so things have changed since. But the lesson still holds: the course you choose, and the skills you build alongside it, matter a lot.

Five questions to help you choose

1. What do you enjoy and do well? Look at the subjects you're strongest in and the activities that make you lose track of time.
2. Is there demand for it? Check whether jobs, businesses or customers need this skill in Nigeria, or online.
3. How crowded is the course? If it's very competitive, have a strong second choice in the same family. Pharmacy instead of medicine, for example.
4. What will it cost, and for how long? Some careers need six or more years of study before you earn.
5. Can you start building skills now? Coding, writing, design, selling or a trade can start in secondary school, for free or cheaply.

Skills that help in every career

The same WEF report found some skills stay valuable whatever the job:

• Thinking clearly: working through problems step by step.
• Bouncing back: handling setbacks and keeping going.
• Working with people: teamwork, leadership and communication.
• Using technology: digital skills, and now AI tools.

These are learned through practice, not just by reading.

A word for parents

It's natural to want your child to become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. These are great careers. But the best career is one your child can get into, do well in, and earn a living from. Talk with your child, look at the numbers together, and keep more than one door open.

Explore our career guides by field: Tech, Health and science and Engineering. More fields are coming.

If your child needs help with the subjects their career needs, Scholarleveling has live classes with teachers on any phone, and parents get a code to follow their progress.

Read next: how to raise your JAMB score, or the digital skills Nigerians are paying to learn.