63.6% of Ghana’s employed population are vulnerably employed – GSS

Ghana’s employed labour force pegged at 11.09 million as of 2022 (Quarter 3) is dominated by individuals who are vulnerably employed, according to the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).

The GSS in its 2022 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey Third Quarter Labour Statistics Report on May 3, 2023, revealed that 63.6 percent of the total employed labour force are individuals who are self-employed and without employees or contributing family workers.

Per analysis of the GSS’s data, a total of 7,053,240 Ghanaians representing are vulnerably employed.

The gender ratio indicates that more women are vulnerably employed. There is a marginal decrease in Ghana’s vulnerable employment from quarter one to quarter three of last year.

During the first and second quarters of 2022, the vulnerable employment stood at 66.8% and 67.6% respectively. The increase in vulnerable employment was caused by the addition of more women into this category.

The GSS does not explain why more women became vulnerably employed, however, a part of its findings indicated that across the three quarters, about 157,000 persons experienced an unemployment spell which may have resulted from frictional unemployment (when workers go unemployed to find a new job after quitting the previous one) or structural unemployment (when there is a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers).

Experts say that persons who are vulnerably employed are less likely to have formal work arrangements, and are therefore more likely to lack decent working conditions, adequate social security and ‘voice’ through effective representation by trade unions and similar organizations.

“Vulnerable employment is often characterized by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers’ fundamental rights,” International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Country Director, Lawrence Jeff Johnson, is quoted to have said on ILO’s website.

This goes to suggest that having a large number of citizens vulnerably employed would not augur well for the economy.

Meanwhile, GSS says two-thirds of the unemployed labour force are women.

A total of 1.76 million Ghanaians were unemployed in the third quarter of 2022, implying that 1,178,333 women are unemployed.

Other findings in the report reveal that the likelihood of shifting from informal employment to unemployment is five times greater on average than transitioning from formal employment to unemployment.

Also, the group of people who are burdened by the triple threat of being unemployed, food insecure, and multidimensionally impoverished increased by almost 55,000 between quarter 2 and quarter 3 in 2022.