1.76 million Ghanaians are unemployed— GSS reveals in new survey
About 1.76 million Ghanaians are unemployed in the third quarter of 2022, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has revealed in its 2022 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) Third Quarterly Labour Statistics Report.
Within this population, two out of every three unemployed persons are females.
Across the three quarters, about 157,000 persons experienced an unemployment spell that is they were unemployed in all the quarters.
The report which was released on Wednesday further stated that close to 7.5 million persons remained employed throughout the three quarters out of the about 11 million persons employed in each quarter.
“The definition for vulnerable employment includes; are you self-employed without your colleagues, are you a contributing family worker? Our findings show that two out of every three persons employed are in vulnerable employment.”
“We see this skewed towards females to the extent that we find about 200 percentage point difference between males and females. Although we had 11 million people employed, two-thirds of this number were vulnerably employed.”
It also found that the transition from informal employment to unemployment was, on average, five times more common than the movement from formal employment into unemployment.
“Across the three quarters, about 157,000 persons experienced an unemployment spell, with close to 124,000 gaining employment in Q3 out of more than 377,000 persons who were unemployed in the first and second quarters. Additionally, almost 90,000 persons outside the labour force in the first quarter transitioned to unemployment status in second quarter and remained unemployed in the third quarter.”
The report also showed that the number of persons who are unemployed and multidimensionally poor remained at an average of about 615,000 across the three quarters, with a marginal increase of close to 20,000 more persons between the second and third quarters.
“However, the number of persons unemployed, feel insecure, and multidimensionally poor decreased by 78,000 between the first and second quarters but increased by almost 55,000 in the third quarter.”
Speaking during the launch of the report, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim stressed the need for government and stakeholders to “implement policies and initiatives to address the unemployment and underemployment challenges, especially among young people, to boost economic growth and development.”
