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ECONOMY

Introduction

The overall development of a country is based on the production of goods and services. Critical to the production process is the human capital of the country. Although all persons, irrespective of age and sex consume goods and services, only a section of the total population produces them. This is the working population often referred to as the “employed’. The type of economic activity pursued is influenced by the nature of the economy and level of socio-economic development (Hull, 2009).

Generally, the larger the employed population, the more wealth is created leading to the general well-being of the population. Over the years, a number of job opportunities have been created in the public and private sectors in a wide range of economic activities. Contributing to employment opportunities in any country or area are factors such as the structure of the population, proportion of the economically active population and the labour market. A detailed study of the dynamics of the population and the labour market helps to identify the employment opportunities available and the structure of the economy.

Data on economic characteristics provide a profile of the population and how persons enumerated are economically engaged and the sectors of the economy in which they are engaged. These data are needed for computing economic indicators and determining the level of economic development of the country. The data are also needed for planning, monitoring and for assessing the impact of various economic and social intervention programmes. This chapter will examine activity status, occupation, industry, and employment status and employment sector.

Economic Activity Status

Tables 4.1 shows the economic activity status of persons 15 years and older by sex in the district. Slightly about eight out of ten persons are economically active (84.2%) while 15.8 percent are economically not active. Interestingly, almost all the economically active persons are employed. All those who were employed either worked or did not work but had jobs to go back to. About six out of ten persons (58.1%) who are unemployed were seeking for work for the first time. Similarly, 56.4 percent of those who were economically not active were in full time education and 23.1 percent did home duties, whiles only 16.3 percent were either retired, disabled/sick or were too old/young to work.

From Table 4.1, there are many males than females seeking for work for the first time and are available for work. As expected many females who are economically not active do household chores than males.

Figure 4.1 portrays the economic activity status by sex of population 15 years and older. It shows that the proportion of males who were economically active is slightly higher than the proportion of females in the same category. Perhaps, the predominantly cocoa producing nature of the district account for this pattern – cocoa production has inadvertently become the preserve of men in the country.

Table 4.2 depicts the population 15 years and older by sex, age and activity status. The population employed (83.3%; 25,769) is more than the unemployed (0.80%; 248) as well as the economically inactive (15.8%; 4,896). The proportion of employed was higher among those aged 25-29 (16.2%) years and for those unemployed, those between 20 and 24 years recorded the highest for the unemployed (29.8%). Economically inactive population is highest among 15-19 years (54%). The reason accounting for these disparities is the fact that those 15-19 years are likely to be still in school; persons 25-39 years are considered the working class who are engaged in various kinds of jobs. By sex distribution, the economically inactive population is clustered around those between 15-19 as shown in Table 4.2.

Fifty-four percent is recorded for those who are economically not active because this group of people are either aged or are children and hence are very young or physically weak to engage in economic actives. It is worth mentioning that those who were 65 years and older are still active in the district constituting 5.8 percent of the total population in this category. Of these, 5.0 percent were employed and the rest were either unemployed or economically not active.

Occupation

Occupation refers to the type of work the person is engaged in at the establishment where the person works. Table 4.3 depicts employed population 15 years and older by occupation and sex. From Table 4.3, 84 percent of persons 15 years and older were engaged as skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers. This was followed by service and sales workers (5.5%) and craft and related trade workers (4.3%). Broken by sex, slightly more males (85.9%) than females (82%) were engaged in skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery. The next highest category among females was the service and sales (9.3%) whereas that of the males is craft and related workers (3.8%).

Date Created : 11/20/2017 2:42:56 AM