1. “Strong growth amidst job creation concerns: Insight from Ghana” William Baah-Boateng  University of Ghana  University of Kassel, Germany  African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET)

2. Introduction After recovering from recession in the early 1980s on the back of IMF/World Bank sponsored economic reform, no slip in to recession has been recorded A rebase of the national accounts in 2006 pushed the country to join the list of Lower Middle income countries. Growth peaked at 15% in 2011 on the back of commencement of commercial extraction of oil in 2011 Concerns however have been expressed on weak employment creation (and quality) effect of the growth

3. Growth Pattern

4. Drivers of Growth Growth rate and sectoral distribution of Real GDP Sector Growth Rate Sectoral Shares of GDP 1993-2013 1993 2000 2005 2011 2012 2013 Agriculture 3.9 41.4 39.4 40.9 25.3 23.0 22.0 Industry 7.6 27.8 28.4 27.5 25.6 28.6 28.6 Mining, & oil 15.9 6.1 5.6 5.0 8.4 8.8 7.9 Manufacturing 4.2 10.5 10.1 9.5 6.9 6.9 6.3 Construction 9.9 8.3 9.7 10.0 8.9 10.5 12.6 Service 6.5 30.8 32.2 31.6 49.1 48.4 49.4 Trade 6.9 6.5 7.5 7.8 5.9 5.6 5.4 Finance 9.1 4.6 4.8 4.8 4.4 5.0 5.2 Source: Computed from National Accounts, GSS

5. Employment: Agriculture to Service

6. High level of informality and vulnerable employment

7. Unemployment

8. Declining poverty but rising inequality

9. Productivity Labour productivity measured by GDP per worker as:

10. Productivity Following Sparreboom and Gomis (2015), We decomposed aggregate labour productivity growth into “within sector effect” & “between sector effect” as:

11. Employment Response to Growth

12. Measuring Employment Elasticity Arithmetic computation Regression

13. Employment Response to Growth

14. Linear Regression Results 1991-2013: Dep. variable – log of employment Variable Base Base+ controls lnY t (log of Real GDP) 0.632*** 0.216*** lnRMW t (log of Real MW) ----- -0.009 lnP t (log of population size) --- 0.839** D (dummy of rebasing in 2006) -2.107***-0.717*** Constant -1.943**-13.351*** R 2 0.9836 0.9965 F-stats 628.57*** 1368.17* Breusch-Godfrey LM test autocorrelation Chi2 11.81*** 2.446* Breuch-Pagan test for Heterskedasticity Chi2 3.64** 2.19* Ramsey RESET omitted variable F (3, 15) 28.95*** 3.71** N 23 23

15. Conclusion Weak and declining employment response to growth Employment being generated are mostly vulnerable with declining formal sector employment One could then link declining poverty amidst inequality to weak “good” job creation A need to refocus growth on high labour absorption sectors of manufacturing & agriculture Leverage on high growth in extractives (mining and oil) to finance infrastructure to support growth of high labour growth sectors

16. Thank you!!!