Economic Growth and Labour Market Dynamics in Nigeria: Further Evidence from ARDL Bound Testing
Recently the phenomenon of jobless growth has become common, defying the famous Okun law which predicted increase in job with increase in economic growth. Many factors have been advanced as explanations for this, most prominent of which are changes in the labour market and lopsidedness in economic growth. This paper is an attempt to measure labour market dynamics in Nigeria focusing on the relationship between economic growth and unemployment. The paper used data from 1991 to 2020 and employed GMM and ARDL models to analyze the data. Unlike the Okun law which prophesies negative relationship between unemployment and economic growth, the result from this analysis show that there is positive relationship between unemployment and economic growth, confirming the existence of the phenomenon of jobless growth in Nigeria. The paper recommended structural changes in the economy and the labour market.