Unemployment Rate, Gender Inequality and Economic Growth in Nigeria “A Short-Run Impact Analysis” (Published)
This paper examines the short-run impact of gender inequality (proxy by primary and secondary school enrollment) and economic growth (real gross domestic product) on unemployment rate in Nigeria, and also the study determines how much of the forecast error variance of unemployment can be explained by exogenous shocks from variables (gender inequality, economic growth, and population growth rate). Thus, the study using Engel Granger Error Correction Model and Dynamic Stochastic Variance Decomposition Model on a time series data collected from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. The error correction results in both model 1 and model 2 are robust and consistent with their signs; the impact of gender inequality is positive in both short run models, but significant only in model 1 before the control variables were introduced. Again, the variance decomposition result indicates that gender Inequality emits the highest impulse on the rate of unemployment at 34.735% on average of the ten periods. While economic growth has a negative impact on the rate of unemployment for the two models and exerted only 8.438% impulse on average. The variance decomposition results also showed that unemployment rate transmitted on average of 78.453% impulse on itself for the 10periods under review. Exchange rate, inflation rate, and gross capital formation emitted 28.68%, 10.78%, and 6.81% respectively on average on unemployment rate. Finally, population growth rate transmitted 5.59% impulse on unemployment. There is a long run relationship between the variables and the speed of adjustment towards equilibrium is 52%. Thus, we conclude that gender inequality is a strong factor of unemployment and policy makers and government should embark on developing laws that will reduce/eradicate gender disparity in Nigeria.
Keywords: Error Correction Model, Gender Inequality, Unemployment, Variance Decomposition, economic growth
EMPLOYABILITY OF TERTIARY EDUCATION GRADUATES IN NIGERIA: CLOSING THE SKILLS-GAP (Published)
The issue of graduate unemployment has been in the front burner of discourse in the nation in recent years with the churning out of graduate’s year in, year out clogging further the labour market. Even with the large number of unemployed graduates in the country, employers of labour still find it difficult to fill the existing few vacancies that crop up from time to time because these graduates are often found unemployable. They lack certain requisite skills for sustainable employment. These skills create a gap in their knowledge which should have been embedded in the curriculum used in the process of training them. From the literature reviewed, the paper looked into what the employers actually want, recognising the gaps in the required skills and how these can be incorporated into the curriculum the students are exposed to before they graduate. This curriculum should expose them to skills apart from technical and professional skills that will make them employable or make them self-employed, reducing greatly the number of unemployed people in the nation. This will stem the tide of rising social menace in the country often created by joblessness, which if not addressed can threaten the stability of the nation
Keywords: Employability, Employability Skills, Entrepreneurship, Skills-Gap, Unemployment