The Employment and Labour Relations ministry will henceforth have better grounds of operation and policy making to transform Ghana’s growing unemployment rate in the country. The introduction of the first ever labour force survey report by the Ghana Statistical Service will make this possible.

The 2015 Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the first stand-alone survey on labour aimed at collecting basic statistics on Ghana's human resource. The survey thus provides data to both the public and private sectors and other relevant institutions to enable them make informed decisions on the labour force and labour-related issues in the country.

Speaking on the sidelines of the report launch Thursday, Employment and Labour Relations Minister, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, lauded the Ghana Statistical Service for its role in the production of the country's first stand-alone survey on labour.

According to him, the report will play a vital role in providing the ministry with adequate information on the state of affairs as far as employment and unemployment issues are concerned. It will also breach the previous gap of inadequacies and unavailability of data and statistics to equip the ministry in its operations.

“This is a research report that is going to give us evidence-based issues related to employment issues in the country, it is going to give us a true picture of the unemployment situation, and the true picture of people who are employed, what types of job they are doing, how are the jobs spread throughout the region. If you sit in Accra here and assume that perhaps what you see here reflects the totality, sometimes you may be wrong, so sometimes it’s good to get experts to go round, interview the people”, he said.

Additionally Mr. Baffour Awuah said the report will serve as a reference material for other stakeholders including researchers, and other relevant institutions who may implore its use in their work.

He charged the Ghana Statistical Service with the mandate of ensuring that the surveys are frequently conducted and published for stakeholders to keep abreast with the issues and produce timely results to that effect.

“I think we might have to take our time to study in detail what the report says so that we use that to influence policy making in future. The essence of report findings like this is that if it is not delivered on time, it becomes useless because it may not be relevant to issues which may be pertaining at the time it was released”, he stated.

Mr. Baffour Awuah also urged stakeholders to carefully study the report, identify the gaps in the system and create policies to address those gaps moving forward, this he says will help address the growing spate of unemployment in the country.

The 2015 Labour Force Survey was launched by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah in Accra Thursday March 23 2017.