Ghana’s productivity is being held back by a poorly skilled workforce, with 74 per cent of workers lacking education beyond Junior High School (JHS), labour economist Prof. William Baah-Boateng has said.
He warned that this skills gap is a major obstacle to economic growth and the country’s ambition to implement a 24-hour economy, a key policy direction of President John Dramani Mahama’s administration.
Speaking at the launch of the Productivity, Employment, and Growth Report on February 24, 2025, Prof. Baah-Boateng said that 20 per cent of Ghana’s labour force has no formal education, while 54 per cent have only JHS-level education.
“This is a structural problem that limits productivity growth,” he said. “We cannot expect to compete globally or transform our economy with a workforce that lacks the necessary skills.”
Advertisement
He added that Ghana’s labour productivity, while improving, remains far behind that of upper-middle-income countries.
“Our workers produce an average of $6 per hour, compared to $70 in the United States. This gap is too wide if we are serious about achieving economic progress,” he stated.
According to the report, Ghana’s workforce faces an education gap, with 20 per cent of workers having no formal education and 54% attaining only JHS-level education.
This leaves a small portion of the population with the higher-level skills needed to drive economic growth.
Labour productivity in Ghana has grown at an average of 3.2 per cent annually from 1991 to 2019. However, experts say this rate is too slow to drive the economic transformation the country needs.
The mining sector recorded the highest productivity growth at 21.7 per cent, yet this has not led to more jobs. Meanwhile, household agriculture and informal urban services, which employ most workers, remain low-productivity sectors that do not contribute significantly to economic expansion.
Wages in Ghana are not keeping up with productivity growth, and the gap between earnings and productivity is widening, particularly in the informal sector, where most Ghanaians work.
Prof. Baah-Boateng called for urgent investment in education and skills training, particularly for the youth, where unemployment stands at 29.6 per cent.
He also urged the government to channel resources into high-productivity sectors such as manufacturing, commercial agriculture, and utilities, which have the potential to generate both jobs and higher wages.
“The future of manufacturing will be crucial to Ghana’s economic growth,” he said. “It is a sector with the capacity to create jobs and increase productivity, and it must be given serious attention.”
