# **6. Summary and Conclusions**

We have seen that labor force growth rate being slower than the population .growth rate in Ghana during 1980-90, but the pattern has reversed ever since. Hence there is going to be an increased supply of labor, and this is very true of the youth population of this country which is expected to grow at an even faster rate during 1990-2000. In order to cope with this increased young labor force the labor markets have to become more efficient and be able to absorb the increase in active population. The labor force participation rates of those between 26-45 years have been increasing rapidly and having its pressure on increasing labor force. Although on average female participation rates have become equal to males during this period, still there is wide dispersions between females and males when looked at by sector of employment. Women are mostly in the self-employed group while wage employment is unduly over represented by men. The increase in female LFP has increased the participation rates in rural areas from 62 percent in 1987 to 75 percent in 1992. However, one of the worrying features of increasing labor force and those unemployed is that they are on average highly educated than those of a decade ago.

The share of formal employment is on decline while private infornal sector share has been increasing, especially in urban areas. Self employed trade category has been absorbing more labor during this period with majority of them having primary education or less. Formal sector employs most of the educated labor with a majority of them having middle or secondary schooling. Most of the post-secondary qualified are in the public sector and most of them are males. The share of females has been increasing but only marginally. Unemployment is a pervasive problem in urban areas while visible unemployment is much smaller in rural areas. The latter may be due to large hidden underemployment in rural areas as has been shown elsewhere (Alderman et al, 1993).

The production figures by broad sectors show that increases in GDP share has been corresponded by larger number of people employed. This indicates that labor productivity may have not been increasing and possibly declining. This, among other things, definitely has implications for the profitability of most economic activities and their absorptive capacity in the long-run and require further analysis.

Between 1987-92 the survey figures indicate that there has been reverse migration with large number of people moving from urban to rural areas. Apart from few growth poles, such as Greater Accra, Ashanti and Western regions, all other urban centers have been displaying out migration. In terms of reasons most migration has been for family reasons; employment related migration has been on the increase. This indicates that labor mobility has been increasing, but it is difficult to establish how many of them were moving with lucrative employment.

Literacy rates have been showing an interesting picture. Female literacy rates have been lower than males and this seem to have had an impact on employment opportunities in the informal sector, making it a male dominated sector. The proportion of female graduates is on the increase although the rates of return are still low. Most of the 47