An Empirical Analysis of Economic Growth and Unemployment in Zambia from 2011 to 2021

The study attempts to provide an empirical analysis of the relationship between economic growth (in the form of Real GDP) and unemployment rate for Zambia from 2011 to 2021, using time series techniques. The time series techniques used were Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test for stationarity, Johansen tests for cointegration to test long run relationship between economic growth and unemployment rate, regression using vector autoregression to test the cointegration properties and Granger tests for causality. Empirical results shows that there is a long run relationship between economic growth and unemployment; economic growth has a negative impact on unemployment, i.e., as economic growth rate increases, the unemployment rate decreases, and vice versa, suggesting that Okun’s Law is applicable in the Zambian economy as they prove that growing GDP (economic growth) decreases unemployment. The study recommended that the government of the Republic of Zambia need to implement strong economic policies that will ensure a strong, stable and growing economy which will in turn reduce the unemployment rates and hence improve the livelihoods of the people.