48% of Ghanaian youth jobless - World Bank report

A new report by the World Bank on unemployment in Ghana has revealed that about 48 percent of Ghanaians between the ages of 15-24 do not have jobs.

The report, "The Landscape of Jobs in Ghana", touched on ways of finding opportunities for youth inclusion in Ghana's labour market.

“In Ghana, youth are less likely than adults to be working: in 2012, about 52% of people aged 15-24 were employed (compared to about 90% for the 25-64 population), a third were in school, 14% were inactive and 4% were unemployed actively looking for job. Young women in the same age group are particularly disadvantaged and have much higher inactivity rates that men: 17% of young female are inactive as opposed to 11% of males,” the report said.

The release of the report comes weeks after the communications minister said government has created 600,000.

Dr. Omane Boamah also added that 96,000 people have also been trained to create their own jobs.

But the lead researcher and senior economist with the World Bank, Sarah Johansen said the youth in the country could only be empowered to get or create jobs, if their educational foundation is solid.

“Ghana has been able to increase access to education. Now the issue is how to go to the next level and ensure that there is quality education. Because the skills you have at the end of secondary education is not maybe such a big problem, if you don’t have the labour market relevant skills;that you need to be able to acquire it. For that you need to have basic skills- so the question is have you learned those in school? And I think this is the issue that Ghana needs to be looking at now.

“For that you need to have basic skills. So the question is have you learnt that in school and I think this is the issue that Ghana needs to be looking out now; so how can we make sure that people are prepared to learn more because what you learn in school is how you learn better. If you can’t read very well and not used to learning situation, you are not going to be able to pick up job technical skills either.”

Women in the country are particularly disadvantaged, the report added, saying they have higher job inactivity rates than their male counterparts.

According to the report, 17% of young females are inactive as opposed to 11% of males.

The World Bank estimates that youth between 15-24 will peak in the coming decade raising concerns about the preparedness of the country’s economy to deal with the youth bulge.