Determinants of types of underemployment in the MiDA intervention zones of Ghana

Abstract

Underemployment is a severe form of human resource underutilization, especially in the rural areas of Ghana. Unfortunately while its ‘twin brother’, unemployment, had for many years enjoyed some attention in the world of research, much cannot be said of underemployment. Using labour underutilization framework, the paper employs multinomial logistic regression to investigate empirically the various forms of underemployment and their determinants in the three MiDA intervention zones in Ghana. The empirical analysis was done with the data of the Ghana Living Standard Survey Five Plus (GLSS 5+) and factors such as: experience, employment in the manufacturing sector and settlement in an urban location tend out not to be in support of underemployment. Consistent with findings of previous studies, the study found all forms of underemployment to be highly pervasive in the rural areas. Unexpectedly, acquisition of tertiary academic qualification was found to exacerbate the incidence of underemployment. Suggestion was therefore made to the stakeholders of the Ghanaian economy to develop pragmatic measures to address the problem of labour underutilization, especially those involving graduates of tertiary institutions, in order not to discourage Ghanaians from seeking higher academic laurels