This study examines the relationship between growth and employment in Nigeria to
gain insights into the country’s paradox of high economic growth alongside rising poverty and
inequality. The methodology adopted is the Shapley decomposition approach, complemented
with econometric estimation of the country’s employment intensity of growth.
The findings indicate that Nigeria’s growth over the last decade has been ‘jobless’ and sustained
largely by factor reallocations rather than productivity enhancement. Labour reallocations have
been mainly from agriculture and manufacturing towards the low productive services sector.
Employment elasticity of growth was positive and quite low, reflecting the country’s poor overall
employment generation record, especially in manufacturing