Economist and Professor of Finance at the University of Ghana Business School, Prof. Godfred Bokpin, has described the absence of explicit employment targets in Ghana's macroeconomic framework as one of the country's biggest economic policy failures.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Thursday, July 16, Prof. Bokpin said Ghana cannot expect economic growth to translate into jobs when employment generation is not treated as a core national policy objective.

He stressed that setting annual employment targets would compel policymakers to channel resources into labour-intensive sectors of the economy, making job creation a deliberate outcome of economic planning rather than a by-product of growth.

"If we were intentional in resource allocation to the critical areas of the economy where we can engineer job-rich growth, we would focus on labour-intensive subsectors where employment creation is high. But because there is no priority on employment generation as part of Ghana's macroeconomic outlook, we continue to experience jobless growth," he said.

His comments follow the National Development Planning Commission's (NDPC) assessment that Ghana's 6% GDP growth in 2025 was largely "jobless", with the benefits of economic expansion failing to produce adequate employment opportunities.

According to Prof. Bokpin, Ghana has consistently prioritised indicators such as inflation, GDP growth and external balances while overlooking employment, resulting in years of growth that have failed to absorb the country's growing labour force.

"If unemployment or employment generation remains a key component of Ghana's macroeconomic failure, then there should be express targets for employment generation in the national budget," he said.

He argued that just as government sets annual targets for inflation, GDP growth and import cover, it should also establish measurable job creation targets and regularly monitor progress.

"We track GDP growth. We track inflation, and inflation is reported every month. But there is no nationally determined data generation on employment in a way that allows us to track the progress we are making," he noted.

Prof. Bokpin said the absence of clear employment benchmarks has made it difficult to align public spending and investment with sectors capable of generating large numbers of jobs.

Prof. Bokpin maintained that until employment is elevated to the same level of importance as other macroeconomic indicators, Ghana's economic growth is unlikely to deliver the broad-based improvements in livelihoods that many citizens expect.