Education, skills, and duration of unemployment in Ghana
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Cogent Economics & Finance
Abstract
The unmatched growth in available jobs, given the rising youth popula tion, is a major concern for policymakers in sub-Saharan African countries (SSAs),
particularly Ghana. The weakness in the link between education and the needed
skill by the industry, has been labelled as the cause of rising unemployment and
prolonged unemployment duration in Ghana. This paper presents new evidence on
the effect of education and skill—language, computer and numeracy skills—on
unemployment duration in Ghana using the Skill Towards Employment and
Productivity (STEP) skill dataset collected by the World Bank in 2013. The study
employs Cox’s Proportional Hazard Model to examine the effect of education,
language, computer and numeracy skill on unemployment duration. We found that
education reduces the duration of unemployment in general. However, the effect is
higher for exiting salaried work compared to self-employed jobs. Proficiency in
computer, English or Ewe reduces the duration of unemployment. In particular, we
observe that individuals highly skilled in computer use are 34.4% more likely to exit
unemployment compared to those without computer skills. Interestingly, the effect
of computer skills is through channels other than formal education.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
unemployment duration, education, Ghana, hazard ratio, skill