MINIMUM WAGE AND INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT NEXUS IN NIGERIA:

The industrial sector substitutes labour intensive means of massive production to capital intensive means of production in Nigeria, all in a bid to avoid the negative impact of increasing national minimum wage, thereby resulting to increased lay off of workers, improved numerical strength of adverse poverty and reduced standard of living in the country based on empirical literature. This points out that there is likely causality between minimum wage and industrial sector output in Nigeria. Consequently, this study investigates the causality between minimum wage and industrial output in Nigeria. Time series data were sourced on broad money supply, gross domestic private investment, inflation, national minimum wage and industrial output and analyzed based on an ex-post facto design. Granger Causality was employed to test the direction of causality between variables. The result from pairwise granger causality shows that national minimum wage exhibited a one way causality with broad money supply. The outcome indicates that changes in broad money supply which escalates inflation also influences national minimum wage rate. Industrial output is seen to cause gross domestic private investment in Nigeria between 1981 and 2021. It was recommended based on empirical result that, policy makers should rather device more profitable ways to improve industrial output in Nigeria in the face of hyperinflation rate and continuous currency devaluation. The study concludes that, in the case of Nigeria, what the nation need is a better management of macroeconomic variables that would foster the value of every naira and not increasing the national minimum wage in the face of a free rising inflation and exchange rate volatility.

MINIMUM WAGE AND INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT NEXUS IN NIGERIA: X-RAYING CAUSATION