More than 2.1 million persons aged 15 to 35 were not in education, employment, or training in 2022, according to the Ghana Statistics Service (GSS).
As of the last quarter of the year, one in every five persons, 20.2 per cent, aged 15 to 35 was not in education, employment or training.
The Greater Accra Region recorded the highest rate of 26.5 per cent in the fourth quarter followed by Ashanti and Upper East with 22.9 per cent.
All 16 regions recorded double-digit figures for youth not in education, employment or training with the lowest recorded in Oti in the fourth quarter 11.2 per cent.
This was contained in the GSS released Ghana Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey – Quarter 4 2022 Labour Statistics Report.
According to the report, there were at least a quarter of a million persons who were unemployed and living in food insecure households in all four quarters of 2022.
The report noted that more than half a million persons in the labour force were unemployed and multidimensionally poor i
n the year, ranging from an estimated 550,000 in the fourth quarter to 780,000 in the first quarter.
‘The unemployment rate in the fourth quarter was 11.5 percent, the lowest recorded across all quarters in 2022.’
‘Fourth quarter unemployment rates are higher for females (12.5%) compared to males (10.3%); and higher in urban areas (14.3%) compared to rural (7.8%), patterns consistent with what was observed for the previous three quarters,’ the report added.
According to the report, two in every three, 68.1 per cent, employed persons 15 years and older in the fourth quarter were in vulnerable employment, meaning they were self-employed without employees or contributing family workers.
The report added that all regions except for the Greater Accra had more than half of the employed persons in vulnerable employment.
‘The highest rate of vulnerable employment in the fourth quarter was recorded in the North East Region with 92.1 per cent, Savannah Region 90.6 per cent, and Northern Region with 84.2 per cent,’
the report noted.
The Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) is the first nationally representative high-frequency household panel survey in Ghana.
Source: Ghana News Agency