Ghana’s official unemployment rate is somewhere around 2.4%. That’s a very low number; Ghanaians are hard-working people, and many of them work the same jobs until they are physically unable to do so. In fact, I met a woman in the Volta region (which is very remote compared to places like Cape Coast or Accra) who has worked as a farmer in her village since she was a young woman. She thinks that she’s now about 95 years old, and she still lives alone, does her work on her farm, and won’t let anyone help!
The problem is that a huge majority of Ghana’s working class makes incredibly low wages. Living wages take into account the amount of money needed to live above the poverty line. According to tradingeconomics.com, Ghana’s living wage as of 2018 was 900 cedis per month, or around $175. That amounts to about $2,100 of earnings in an entire year. In contrast, the living wage for single people in New York is estimated to be around $36,300 per year. Of course, there’s a big difference in cost of living between New York and Ghana, but the difference in living wage is enormous.
The bigger problem is that many Ghanaians don’t actually make living wage. It is difficult to find confirmed data on income because of the lack of organization in gathering such information by the Ghanaian government, but according to one of my professors, many Ghanaians make as little as 200 cedis a month, or $39 per month in USD.
