Mojere Adegbite, VALK-KENNETH2024-05-222024-05-222022-12Kate TurabianM.Schttps://repository.lcu.edu.ng/handle/123456789/272This study investigated the nature and extent of the relationship between the population growth and unemployment level in Nigeria between 1981 and 2020. The specific objectives of the study were to investigate the causal relationship between the growth in population and unemployment in Nigeria; and to analyze the response of Unemployment to shocks in population growth in Nigeria. This was motivated by the high rate of unemployment level in Nigeria because the optimal proportion of the country's labour force can not be absorbed by the prevailing economic condition of the country. To be able to address this problem, a thorough understanding of the dynamic and interplay between population and unemployment is highly required. Time series data for the analysis were sourced from world development index (WDI). The data were subjected to preliminary analysis which include the trends, descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of the variables for empirical analysis and the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) stationary test. The two objectives were examined using Toda-Yamamoto (TY) causality test, because the variables included were observed to be a mixture of I(0) and I(1), the impulse response (IR) and the variance decomposition analysis (VDA). The result of revealed that there was no direct causality between population growth and unemployment rate in Nigeria. However it can cause unemployment through output growth. It was further discovered that, shocks in unemployment account for most of the variations in itself in he short run while in the long run, population growth and other variables combined are the major contributor to the variations in unemployment rate in Nigeria. It was concluded that population growth have significant impact in the long run. Based on this, it was recommended that concerted effort should be made by the government, individuals and agencies to check and stabilize population growth and provide infrastructural facilities including education and channel the growing population into productive sectors of the economy in order to enable them to make meaningful contribution to the economic growth and development of the country. Keywords: Population growth , Unemployment rate, Dependency ratio. Word Count: 299enThesis