Population Growth and Unemployment in Zanzibar

The study aims to determine the effect of population growth and unemployment status in Zanzibar from 1990 to 2020. Descriptive analysis was used to investigate the normality of variables used and VECM estimation was used to estimate the results. In long run, the findings from this study revealed that, population growth contribute positively to increase the unemployment problem by 5.2 percent, however, the GDP per capita and inflation shown to reduce unemployment problem by 0.3 and 0.7 percent respectively. For the case of short run, population growth, Inflation and GDP per capita found to have positive contribution to increase the unemployment problem in Zanzibar by 0.55, 0.01, and 0.22 percent respectively. The findings also confirm the presence of unidirectional Granger causality from population growth to unemployment. Therefore, the study concludes that, population growth is among the factor that increase the unemployment rate in Zanzibar. Based on the study results, it is recommended that, Government should emphasize family planning and human capital investment, since it leads to generate the healthier and skilled labours who can compete in labour market and easily employed.