Real Estate Development, Employment Generation and Economic Growth in Nigeria (1990 – 2024)

This study examined the effect of real estate development (RED), labor force participation rate (LFPR), government capital expenditure (GCE), and interest rates (INT) on real GDP in Nigeria from 1990 to 2024. Utilizing annual time-series data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, National Bureau of Statistics, and International Labour Organization, the study employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Error Correction Model (ECM) approaches to establish long-run and short-run relationships among variables. The ARDL bounds test confirmed cointegration at 5% significance level. The error correction term was negative and significant at -0.054 (p=0.000), indicating approximately 5.4% annual adjustment toward equilibrium. Long run estimation results revealed that real estate development positively and significantly affects real GDP with a coefficient of 0.533 (p=0.045), suggesting that a 5% increase in real estate development contributes 0.53% increase in economic growth. However, labor force participation rate (-0.058, p=0.258), government capital expenditure (-0.166, p=0.481), and interest rate (0.065, p=0.206) were statistically insignificant. Diagnostic tests confirmed model adequacy with no serial correlation, homoskedastic residuals, normally distributed errors, and stable parameters. The study concludes that real estate development is a significant driver of Nigeria's economic growth, while the insignificant effects of other variables reflect structural inefficiencies in labor markets, public expenditure management, and monetary policy transmission mechanisms. The study recommends enhancing real estate financing access, improving employment quality through skills development, strengthening public financial management, and developing domestic financial markets to optimize growth outcomes.