Unemployment is one of the most serious impediments to social progress in any nation. Apart from being a colossal waste of a country’s manpower resources, it generates welfare loss in terms of lower output thereby leading to lower income and well-being. Ghana’s unemployment rate currently stands at 20 percent, the 2008 World Factbook has said. The figure, according to Factbook, was 11 percent in 2000. International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines unemployed as the numbers of the economically active population who are without work but available for and seeking work, including people who have lost their jobs and those who have voluntarily left work. Ghana is endowed with enormous human and material resources but these resources have not been optimally utilized. Higher educational institutions in the country play crucial roles in generating the human capacities for leadership, management and technical expertise. Unfortunately, Ghanaian employers normally complain about the quality of recent graduates while the graduates complain of lack of jobs. These human resources have not been adequately channeled to profitable investments to bring about maximum economic benefits. As a result, Ghana has been bedeviled with unemployment and poverty. Ghana’s economic growth has not always been accompanied by decline in unemployment and poverty as would be expected. The protracted energy crisis in the country last year has also adversely affected the manufacturing sector. Among all the sectors of the economy, it is manufacturing that is hardest hit. This is because the cost of running electricity generators increases the cost of production thereby making locally manufactured goods expensive relative to imported products. This has led to many companies folding up because their products cannot compete with their imported counterparts. The situation has resulted in thousands of Ghanaians being laid off. Since it is not the duty of government to employ every employable individual, it has created an enabling environment for business to thrive. One would expect the private sector to use such an environment to create more jobs. No wonder, the Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama, last year re-emphasized that though the enabling environment has been created, the greatest challenge of the Ghanaian economy is the capacity to create jobs for the masses. He made this remark when he inaugurated an ultra-modern service station of Allied Oil Company Limited, a wholly owned Ghanaian oil company in Accra. Government must be commended for implementing the National Youth Employment Programme that currently employs 108,000 youth in the country. Besides manufacturing, agriculture is one sector that if properly developed and given the right policy mix, can suck thousands of youth out of unemployment. But instead of emphasis on agriculture, Ghana is importing food especially rice, even when the country has the capacity to be a net exporter of food. Many unemployed people are not employable because they do not have the requisite skills that can attract an employer. Owing to the falling standards of education in the last few years, a number of companies are unwilling to employ fresh graduates of Ghanaian universities. Those that seek to recruit fresh graduates put in place measures to retrain them and bring them up to standard; and since only a few organisations can afford this extra cost, some Ghanaian firms now advertise job vacancies on the internet for graduates trained in foreign universities. Government should also look into the quality of jobs provided. A situation where a university graduate is made to drive a tricycle, for instance, in the name of poverty alleviation, calls for review. Where government provides jobs, it must be jobs that are sustainable, and not dehumanizing or demeaning ones. A nation with the majority of its youth unemployed is sitting on a keg of gun powder. Such unemployed people will ultimately become a menace to society as is currently the case. Undoubtedly, there is a correlation between the rate of unemployment and crime in Ghana today. Source: Daily Guide