MACROECONOMIC INSTABILITY AND LIVING STANDARDS IN NIGERIA: THE IMPACT OF INFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT (1990-2024)

This study examines the effects of inflation and unemployment on living standards in Nigeria over the period 1990-2024. Despite being Africas largest economy, Nigeria still experiences incessant macroeconomic instability depicted by high inflation, labour market distortions, and falling real incomes. Employing annual secondary time-series data and the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing framework, the study examined both short run and long run dynamics of inflation and unemploymenton living standards while controlling for interest rate, and exchange rate movements. The existence of a lon-grun equilib rium relationship among the variables was certified by the ARDL bounds test. The results confirm that the lon-grun coefficients of inflati on, unemployment, interest rate, and exchange rate are statistically insignificant, indicating weak or unstable long-term effects on living standards. The estimated short run coefficient indicates that unemployment exhibits mixed dynamic effect on living standards, with a statistically insignificant contemporaneous impact but a significant lagged positive effect, indicating delayed labour market adjustments.