The increasing unemployment in Nigeria has motivated several empirical studies on the causes of the problem in the country. However, attention has not been paid to the contribution of the changes in oil prices to the unemployment problem. As a net exporting oil country, a fluctuation in oil prices in the international market can have impact on economic growth and employment. In the light of this, we investigate the effect of changes in oil prices on unemployment rate in Nigeria, using real oil prices of Brent and West Texas International with linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) estimation methods. Findings from linear ARDL show that changes in oil prices have little or no significant effects on unemployment rate. The NARDL results indicate that an increase and a decrease in oil prices have an insignificant positive effect on unemployment in the short run. However, in the long run, an increase in oil prices worsens unemployment situation, while a decrease has insignificant reducing effect. We also find evidence of a long-run asymmetric relationship between oil prices and unemployment. The need for government to invest oil revenues in generating more electricity or in providing alternative sources of energy with the objective to reduce the costs of production of firms is recommended.

尼日利亚失业率的上升激发了对该国问题根源的一些实证研究。但是，尚未注意油价变化对失业问题的贡献。作为石油净出口国，国际市场油价波动可能会对经济增长和就业产生影响。有鉴于此，我们使用布伦特和西德克萨斯国际石油公司的实际石油价格以及线性和非线性自回归分布滞后（NARDL）估计方法，研究了尼日利亚石油价格变化对失业率的影响。线性ARDL的发现表明，石油价格的变化对失业率影响很小或没有显着影响。NARDL的结果表明，石油价格的上涨和下跌在短期内对失业的影响不显着。但是，从长远来看，油价上涨会使失业状况恶化，而下降的影响微不足道。我们还发现，石油价格与失业之间存在长期的不对称关系。建议政府需要将石油收入用于增加发电量或提供替代能源，以降低企业的生产成本。