Al-Hikmah University Journal

Unemployment is one of the major challenges confronting the Nigerian economy; it has led to social unrest and contributed to high crime rate among the people. Thus, this study investigated spatio-temporal analysis of unemployment in Kwara State. Descriptive research design was adopted and multi stage sampling procedure was used to select respondents that participated in the research. The instrument that was used to gather information for this study is a researcher’s designed questionnaire tagged “Questionnaire on Spatio-temporal Analysis of Unemployment’’. It was validated by experts and reliability coefficient of 0.81 was obtained after a test of stability has been carried out on the instrument. Two research questions and six null hypotheses were answered and tested using percentage, mean and inferential statistics of t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of the study revealed that the causes of unemployment are neglect of the agricultural sector, poor development of social facilities in the metropolis, rapid rural-urban migration among others. Also, it was revealed that the consequences of unemployment are high rate of drug or substance abuse, unproductive labour force in the metropolis, high dependence on work force among the youth among others. There was no significant difference in the causes of unemployment in Kwara State based on gender and educational status while significant difference was observed based on age. There was no significant difference in the consequences of unemployment in Kwara State based on gender and educational status while significant difference was observed based on age. Based on the findings of the study it was recommended that; the government should concentrate on reducing unemployment rate in state, government as a matter of urgency need to address all the operational challenges and threats confronting the manufacturing sectors and other investors in the state including agricultural sector should be given proper attention both in the state and the country at large.