Skip to main content Skip to journal navigation menu Skip to site footer

Journal of Emerging Markets and Management

Patterns of Employment and Their Spatial Constraints: Resilience to Climate and Market Crises in Nigeria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63385/jemm.v2i3.101164

Keywords:

Structural Transformation,African Economies,Employment,Climate Resilience,Deforestation,Climate Adaptation,Sustainable Development,Economic Diversification

Abstract

This research examines the sectoral structure of employment in Nigeria and the way that structure shapes spatial constraints on the economy’s resilience to climate and market crises. Rather than treating social capital as a measured variable, the study frames it as contextual background and instead analyses observable sectoral employment, value added, and land-cover dynamics. A gap identified in the literature is the limited treatment of the top-down mechanisms through which capital is channelled into or out of economic sectors, and the spatial consequences that follow. Sectoral data on employment and productivity for Africa, Asia, and Latin America were drawn from the Economic Transformation Database (ETD) and analysed together with data on forest cover, GDP, agricultural land, export revenues, and foreign direct investment across a 1990–2018 time series. The analysis applied multiple linear regression and correlation, with variables for employment and sector value added (% GDP) in Mining, Real Estate, and Agriculture. Forest area is strongly and negatively associated with Agriculture gross value added (r = −0.872) and with combined Mining and Real Estate value added (r = −0.816); the regression of sectoral value added on forest area returns R2 = 0.997, with Agriculture (p < 0.001) and Real Estate (p < 0.001) significant and Mining not significant (p = 0.101). Results indicate a pattern of employment and industrialisation that prioritises extractives for state revenues while the majority of the working population depends on low-wage agriculture under increasingly complicated spatial constraints. The associations reported here are interpreted as structural patterns rather than causal effects. The data suggest that a climate-conscious strategy of sectoral organisation would support progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 8 and the building of climate and economic resilience over the coming 25 years.

References


    License

    Copyright (c) Copyright © 2026 Henry Mooney

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

    Most Viewed

    ×