A total of 1,551,118 persons aged 15 years and above are unemployed, according to the 2021 Population and Housing Census figures.
Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, the Government statistician, said the unemployment rate among the population aged 15 years and above was 13.4% and higher for females with 15.5% and 11.6% for males.
He said about half a million of 487,470, representing 2.5% of persons aged 15 years above were first-time job seekers with an almost equal proportion of males of 2.5% and 2.4% females.
Also, more than two in five, representing 45.5% unemployed persons aged 15 years above were available for work but not seeking employment, of which the youth between 15-35 years constituted 65.8%
Professor Annim explained that employed persons were those above 15 years who engaged in economic activities and unemployed persons as those above 15 years who did not engage in any economic activities.
The figure shows that economic activity among males, which was 63.5% was higher than females at 53%, with more pronounced variation in the rural areas of 63.6% for males and 51.5% females.
Also, the figure stated that the involvement of children in economic activities in the Oti Region of 20.8% was more than six times the national figure of 3.2% and prominent in the five regions: North East, Savannah, Upper West, Northern and Upper East.
In Greater Accra, children’s involvement in economic activity is mostly in service and sales, constituting 42.6% and children aged 5-14 years engaged in economic activity has 80% of them involved in agriculture-related activities with the highest proportion in Savannah of 89.8% and least in Greater Accra of 26.2% regions.
The public sector engages about 10% of the employed population aged 15 and above of which 60% are males.
The Government Statistician said the focus of the Census was to provide quality data about the unemployed situation, especially among the youth for policymakers to act.
“Our interests here are first-time job seekers and those who are available but not seeking for work and from data that we have collected, we are prompting policymakers.”
“Indeed, some of these people have given up on the economy and this is where we need to rethink for intervention,” he said