Unemployment rate not 13.4%; it been adjusted to glorify international benchmarks – international benchmarks

During the 2022 budget reading in Parliament, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, estimated the unemployment rate at the time as 12.6 percent.

He added that 50 percent of Ghanaian youth are underemployed.

However, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, a Government Statistician has alleged that the reported unemployment rate in Ghana is far from the truth.

According to him, the current 13.4% as purported by the International Labour Organisation is not the actual percentage for unemployment in the country.

He alleged that Ghana’s unemployment rate is a political strategy to please the international benchmarks.

“We do this and we get 13.4 per cent and we want to celebrate. This is what I call the politicisation of statistics. Ghana’s unemployment rate can simply not be 13.4 per cent, but for the sake of international benchmarks, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) put it there and we have been using it,” he said.

The economics Professor stated that taking into consideration people who had contracts to work and unemployment, plus the vulnerability of employment, Ghana’s unemployment rate should be something around 49%.

Expressing his concerns, Prof Annim touted that a lot of statistics were not reflective of the country’s economy.

He is of the view that, politicians and organisations had adopted different indices and indicators to generate data to suite their political agenda.

He, however, believes that altering data will negatively impacts policy decisions.

Prof Annim, therefore, urged the government to build a data integrity framework (DIF) based on indicators such as appropriateness, reliability and credibility of using data, statistics and statistical data.

“Sometimes you see data in national policies that are not even consistent with the data that we hold from our MDAs but it is time to clean up the data landscape and provide the needed bias corrections to rightfully impact policy.”

Prof Annim made these remarks when he delivered his speech at the inaugural lecture at the University of Cape Coast.

Government addressing the youth Employment
The Finance Minister stated that Government has over the last five years employed a significant number of young Ghanaians into the public sector particularly in the health, education and security sectors.

He said, government through special programs has created significant job opportunities for the youth.

He said, government took a bold and decisive decision to support Ghanaian youth through the establishment of the National Entrepreneurial and Innovation Program (NEIP) and the Nation Builders Corps (NABCo).

“NABCo was initiated to support 100,000 graduates to acquire relevant workplace skills and experience. So far over 35,000 NABCo trainees have secured permanent jobs,” he said