More females getting jobs than male counterparts –GSS report

A recent report by the Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) has shown that more women are finding employment compared to their male counterparts.

The GSS’ Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) for the year 2023 revealed that out of the 11.39 million Ghanaians employed by the third quarter of 2023, 6.44 million were women while 5.52 million were men.

Despite this trend, the unemployment rate for women saw a slight increase from 17.5% in the 2nd quarter of 2023 to 17.7% in the 3rd quarter. In contrast, the unemployment rate for men remained stable at 10.9% during the same period.

The report also highlighted that there has been a consistent pattern of more women being employed than men, with an average difference of 600,000 to 900,000 for the years 2022 and 2023.

The survey further indicated that the average unemployment rate for the first three quarters of 2023 was 14.7%.

The report noted a significant rise in the unemployment rate for women from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023, resulting in a wider gender gap in unemployment rates for 2023 compared to 2022.

Additionally, the study found that women were less likely to be employed as plant and machine operators or assemblers compared to men, with women averaging 0.3% in these roles while men averaged 11.0%.

The report also revealed that women were more likely to be engaged in vulnerable employment, a trend that has consistently been higher for women compared to men by about 20 percentage points across all seven quarters.