Ghana: National Unemployment Rate Stands At 13.44% – Employment Minister

The Incumbent Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah publicly made it known that Ghana’s national unemployment rate stands at 13.44%.

 

In 2019, the Living Standards Survey Round Seven (GLSS7) calculated the rate to be 8.4%. The stats also has they more than one million – based on GLSS7 of GSS are unemployed – and the youths and teenagers falls under it.

 

Ignatius Baffour-Awuah made this known on his appearance at the parliament yesterday when a question was raised by a Parliament member, Thomas Nyarko Ampem. It was about the current rate of employment in the country as well as actions of the government towards the issue from 2017.

 

The employment minister said that the young employment force which constitutes of Ghanaians from age 15 and above have

9,990,237 employed and 1,551,118 unemployed.

 

The statement by the minister reads thus:

 

“This puts the unemployment rate at 13.44 per cent,” Mr Baffour Awuah said.

“Mr Speaker, the above figures are at variance with the figures obtained from the ILOSTAT on Ghana for the same period. According to the ILOSTAT report, the unemployment figure of Ghana for 2019 was 4.12 per cent and 4.53 per cent for 2020.”

 

The statement further reads:

 

“Mr Speaker, in 2021, the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations undertook a trend analysis of the unemployment situation in the country over the past 29 years (1991-2020). Data for the analysis was sourced from the International Labour Organisation’s ILOSTAT, a global reference for international labour statistics. ILOSTAT cross-references data from the labour surveys, census and other national data from Ghana Statistical Service for its analysis.”

 

 

“Mr Speaker, ILO’s standard definition of unemployed persons is all those you have attained employable age and are available for jobs and looking for jobs but not getting ie this excludes all those who have reached the employable age, not working, yet are not looking for jobs within the reference period.”

 

“GSS, however, uses ILO relaxed definition of unemployment which includes all persons that have reached the employable age and are available for jobs, whether looking for jobs or not. For instance, in analysing the metadata from 2019 from the GSS, GLSS, per ILO’s definition, the unemployment rate stood at 4.12 per cent. But using the relaxed definition an additional 4.3 per cent was added to bring the ratio to 8.4 per cent.”