ABSTRACT:

This study examines the determinants of youth unemployment in the Nigerian labour market.  The data for this study were obtained from the  Labour Force Sample Survey of 2005, carried out by the defunct National Manpower Board.  In addition to the descriptive statistics used in the analyses, the binary logistic regression model was employed.  The study has empirically confirmed the magnitude of unemployment among the youths in Nigeria and that in  2005 when the data for this study was collected, the youths were more than three times as likely as the adults to be unemployed. The data analysis also enabled the study to identify the basic determinants of youth unemployment. Some of these factors are the formal educational attainment of respondents, region of origin, household status, and household size, among others. Several policy prescriptions to reduce unemployment rate and increase both the participation rate and employment-to-population ratio among the youths in Nigeria were put forward in the paper.