THE NEXUS BETWEEN UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYABILITY IN THE NIGERIAN LABOUR MARKET

The persistent challenge of unemployment in Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, has been a subject of significant concern for policymakers, economists, and social scientists. However, a deeper examination reveals a complex interplay between unemployment and unemployability, two related but distinct phenomena that continue to shape Nigeria's labour market dynamics. This paper therefore, examined the nexus between unemployment and unemployability in Nigeria labour market.The specific objectives of the paper includes to examine the situation of unemployment in Nigeria, identifying the reasons why Nigerian graduates are unemployed and to explore the possible solutions to the problems of unemployability in Nigeria. Using Adaptation of Anomie/Strain Theory, the paper adopted secondary sources of data collection to review relevant materials. The paper revealed that Nigeria's unemployment rate stood at 33.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020, marking a significant increase from 27.1% in the second quarter of the year 2021, and increased to 37.4 percent in the last quater of 2022 and currently increasing from 4.2 to 5 percent in the third quarter of 2023. This translates to approximately 23.3 millions currently unemployed Nigerians. The paper identified major reasons why most Nigerian graduates are unemployed and these include lack of employability skills, lack of emphasis on entrepreneurship in the school curriculum, the quality of training not in sync with the current situation of the society, lecturers not possessing current knowledge, endemic corruption, students' apathetic attitude to education and lack of viable plans after National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) scheme among others.The paper further highlighted strategies to solving unemployability challenges among Nigerian graduates and these include overhauling educational system, organizing marketability and employability skills acquisition programmes, establishing labour market information system, infrastructural development, viable industrial policy formulation among others.The paper concluded that the high rate of unemployment among graduates is not merely as a result of scarcity of job opportunities, but also an upshoot of the inability of many graduates to meet the specific skill requirements of available job positions. It is therefore recommended among others, that there should be an implementation of a nationwide educational reform programme that aligns curricula with industrial needs and integrates practical, digital and soft skills training across all levels of Nigerian educational system.