Graduate Unemployment and its Resultant Effects on Developing Economies

Abstract:     
As our educational institutions turns out university graduates year-in- year-out, the labour market which is expected to absorb these graduates puts on the toga of inelasticity. The labour market seems saturated therefore. New jobs were either not being created or created in error, neither were the current jobs restructured nor reengineered and this has brought about a very strong negative impact on the national economy as well as the standard of living of the citizenry because profitable employment is synonymous with empowerment. The issue of graduate unemployment could take many ugly forms therefore.

Some of these graduates could either be properly employed, under-employed, self- employed or even over- employed as the case may be. The government approach to self employment which is expected to be the focus of our educational institutions curricula in solving this menace and shifting emphasis from the so called ‘ white collar’ jobs to self employment status for the benefit of the economy and the quest to reduce unemployment indices have not been able to achieve the desired result.

In the light of these, this study focuses on the unemployment situation as a reflection of good governance and development in Africa with Nigeria as a reference point as well as its impact on the national economy with special reference to human capacity development and nations’ building. The independent t-test and Anova statistical methods were used to assess the significant difference of the study while Microsoft Excel Statistical Package justified the result.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 14

Keywords: Graduate, Employment, Economies, Educational, Development

JEL Classification: E24

working papers series