The effect of minimum wage and inflationary pressure on youth unemployment in Nigeria

Abstract

This study carried out an empirical investigation on the impact of minimum wage and inflationary pressure on youth unemployment in Nigeria from 1991 to 2019 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method to estimate the multiple regression model. The model captured the impact of Inflation, GDP Growth Rate, FDI, Government Expenditure, and Minimum Wage as determinants of youth unemployment in Nigeria. The results show that minimum wage exerts a significant impact on youth unemployment in the country, whereas inflation does not significantly influence youth unemployment. These results disapprove argument in the literature that supports minimum wage as an income policy to improve the welfare of workers in Nigeria because it raises the youth unemployment level in the country. Hence, the study concludes that minimum wage determination should be market-based. With this, the study recommends that the Nigerian government seek alternative measures of improving workers’ welfare and reduce youth unemployment in the country. Keywords: Minimum Wage, Inflation, Youth Unemployment