Finance and tax analyst Nelson Cudjoe Kuagbedzi has issued a stark warning that Ghana’s improving macroeconomic indicators are not translating quickly enough into employment opportunities, as the World Bank reports that 56.4 per cent of Ghanaians remain in poverty despite significant economic recovery .
In an interview with Citi Business News, Mr Cudjoe Kuagbedzi said the challenge is largely the weak transmission of macroeconomic gains into real employment for the country’s growing working-age population.
“I think this is actually a worrying trend because if you look at the primary macro indicators, I think we are doing very well as a country, but the challenge has to do with the transmission effect,” he said.
Growth Without Jobs
The analyst’s comments come against the backdrop of persistent concerns that Ghana’s economic recovery has not been matched by corresponding improvements in household welfare. According to the World Bank’s Poverty & Equity Brief, poverty at the lower-middle income line (US$4.20 per day) is projected to fall to 53.3 per cent in 2025, yet 56.4 per cent of the population remains poor by this measure .
Despite the economy growing at 6.0 per cent in 2025 and accelerating to 6.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, employment growth has lagged significantly behind. Data from the Ghana Statistical Service shows that unemployment eased to 12.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2025, down from 13.7 per cent the previous year, but this still represents over 1.9 million Ghanaians without work . The unemployment rate in urban areas remains significantly higher at 15.1 per cent compared to 9.6 per cent in rural areas .
The youth employment crisis is even more acute. The Ghana Youth Federation recently revealed that nearly 2 million young people aged 15 to 35 are neither in education, employment, nor training, with youth unemployment standing at 21.9 per cent compared with the national average of 12.8 per cent . In the Greater Accra Region, the figure is even higher at 31.9 per cent .
The Transmission Problem
Mr Cudjoe Kuagbedzi noted that the pace at which improvements in the broader economy are creating jobs remains far too slow to address the needs of Ghana’s growing working-age population.
“The rate of transmission of these primary macro indicators into real employment is very, very slow,” he stated.
His concerns echo a 2023 analysis of Ghana’s employment elasticity of output, which revealed that in the 1990s, a 10 per cent GDP growth improved the employment rate by about 7 per cent. By 2023, that figure had dropped to just 2 per cent, meaning the economy has become significantly less effective at turning growth into jobs . Abdul Nasser Alidu, Head of Strategy and Programmes at the 24-Hour Economy Secretariat, described this trajectory as unsustainable. “You cannot build an economy where all your growth translates into job creation somewhere else, and not for your own economy,” he warned .
Call for Strategic Investments
Mr Cudjoe Kuagbedzi called for deliberate policy interventions and investments in sectors with strong employment potential, particularly agriculture and manufacturing.
“Government must deliberately and intentionally invest in sectors that can offer real employment, as for instance, agriculture and manufacturing,” he stated.
He cautioned that allowing sectors with limited employment absorption capacity to drive economic growth could leave Ghana struggling to create sufficient jobs for its growing number of young graduates.
“If the sectors that have limited employment absorption rate are leading the growth, we may not be able to create the needed jobs for our teeming young graduates,” he warned.
Data supports this concern. While the services sector accounts for the highest rate of employment at 6.1 per cent, agriculture employs approximately 34.6 per cent of the workforce and industry just 18.3 per cent . However, agriculture continues to underperform relative to its potential, with Ghana losing an estimated US$2.5 billion annually from exporting raw agricultural produce without adding value .
Government Efforts Underway
The government has acknowledged the employment challenge and is pursuing several initiatives to address it. The Ministry of Trade, Agribusiness and Industry has developed a new National Agribusiness Policy designed to transform Ghana’s agricultural sector into a competitive, inclusive, and climate-resilient engine of growth and job creation . The policy aims to stop the country from losing billions of dollars from raw agricultural exports and create value addition and processing opportunities.
The government is also advancing the revitalisation of special economic zones, repositioning them as active industrial ecosystems oriented towards agro-processing and light manufacturing rather than passive export enclaves .
The 24-Hour Economy Initiative aims to drive productivity, reduce unemployment, and build a more dynamic economic framework that supports job creation across multiple sectors .
However, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) has acknowledged that Ghana’s current growth model has been too narrow. Chairman Nii Moi Thompson recently revealed that the country is shifting toward a more comprehensive framework that places employment and wages at the centre of economic policy . “We are trying to reconceptualise economic growth away from merely reciting figures about GDP, which is one-dimensional, to a three-dimensional measurement, ie GDP, employment creation, and wage growth,” he explained .
The Way Forward
Mr Cudjoe Kuagbedzi believes a stronger focus on employment-intensive sectors would help ensure that economic growth is more broadly shared and translates into improved household incomes.
“Deliberate and intentional policy decisions need to be made in strategic sectors of the economy in order to create the needed jobs and lift a lot more people from the poverty line,” he said.
The urgency of this call is underscored by the broader economic context. A strong cedi, while successful in curbing imported inflation, has created a subsidy for imports that makes it cheaper to bring in finished goods than to manufacture locally . Ghana’s industrial electricity costs of approximately US0.07 per kilowatt-hour, further undermining local manufacturers’ ability to compete with imports .
As Ghana’s economy continues to recover from the 2022-2023 crisis, the challenge of translating macroeconomic stability into meaningful employment and poverty reduction remains the defining test of the government’s transformation agenda.
