This represents a marginal decline from the 13.3 per cent registered in the third quarter of last year and signals modest but steady progress in efforts to expand job opportunities in the economy.

The Government Statistician, Dr Alhassan Iddrisu, who stated this in Accra yesterday, when he released Quarterly Labour Statistics Report (July 2025 Edition), said that the unem­ployment rate averaged 13.6 per cent in 2024, down from 14.6 per cent in 2023, a one-percentage point drop.

He said the report further showed that the labour force, comprising per­sons aged 15 years and above, averaged about 14 million people in 2024, with more than 85 per cent employed in each quarter.

“Between the third and fourth quarters of 2024 alone, some 409,000 additional persons were employed,” he said.

Despite these gains, Dr Iddrisu said youth unemployment remained worry­ingly high.

“The figures showed that 22.5 per cent of persons aged 15 to 35 years were unemployed in 2024, while the rate for the narrower youth category of 15 to 24 years stood at 32 per cent,” Dr Iddrisu stated.

He said seven out of every 10 unemployed persons in the country were within the 15-35 years bracket, underlining the persistent challenge of youth disengagement from both work and education.

The Government Statistician said the proportion of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) also rose in the latter part of 2024, reaching 25.8 per cent for the 15–24 age group and 22.4 per cent for those aged 15–35 years by the final quarter.

He said the report revealed gender and regional disparities in employment trends.

“While more females were em­ployed than males – with the dif­ference widening to 1.12 million in favour of women by the last quarter of 2024 – the female unemployment rate remained consistently higher,” Dr Iddrisu stated.

He said the gender gap in unemploy­ment narrowed significantly from 7.4 percentage points in the first quarter of 2023 to 3.9 percentage points by the end of 2024.

On the regional labour statistics, he said, Greater Accra and Ashanti persistently recorded unemployment rates above the national average, while Eastern, Ahafo, Bono East, Oti and Upper West consistently posted low­er-than-average figures.

“Notably, unemployment in Bono, Northern, Upper West and Eastern re­gions rose steadily through the quarters of 2024, diverging from the national downward trend,” Dr Iddrisu said.

He said the data also showed that unemployment was generally lower in rural areas than in urban centres.

“In 2024, the average unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 15.9 per cent, compared with 10.4 per cent in rural localities,” he said.

The Government Statistician said underemployment and labour un­der-utilisation showed a downward trend.

The labour under-utilisation rate, he said fell sharply from 27.4 per cent in the final quarter of 2023 to 19.3 per cent in the same period of 2024.

Dr Iddrisu said that while employ­ment is growing, a significant propor­tion of jobs remained informal and insecure.