Introduction

Production of goods and services is critical to the development of an economy. The strength of every district lies in the manpower capacities and economic viabilities embedded in it. Where a higher proportion of the population is employed, the general wellbeing of the citizenry is enhanced. Data on economic characteristics are vital for planning, monitoring and evaluating the impact of various economic and social intervention programmes. The items of information collected on population five years and older, were activity status, occupation, and industry and employment status. However, the analyses concentrated on the population 15 years and older. 

Economic Activity Status

Activity status refers to the economic or non-economic activities of respondents during the seven days preceding census night. A person is regarded as economically active if he or she worked for pay or profit or family gain for at least one hour within the seven days preceding the census night. This included those who were in paid employment or self-employment or contributing to family work, did not work, but had jobs to return to, were unemployed but actively looking for work. 

On the other hand, economically not active persons are those who did not work and were not seeking for work. They include homemakers, student, retired persons, persons with disability and persons who are unable to work due to their age or ill-health. Table 4.1 presents population aged 15 years and older by activity status and sex. Out of the total number of persons aged 15 years (25,774) and older in the District, 75.7 percent are economically active. Among the economically active population, 96.7 percent are employed. The Table further shows that, 26.9 percent of females and 21.7 percent of males are economically not active. 

The proportion of males in full time education is higher (53.9%) than the proportion of females (34.0%). This could be due to the stereotype system where males go to school whiles females stay at home and help with household chores. Also, some of the females may have dropped out of school due to pregnancy or early marriage.

Economic activity

As illustrated in Table 4.2, the total population of persons aged 15 years and older in Mpohor District is 25,774 out of which 73.2 percent are employed, 2.5 percent unemployed whiles 24.3 percent are economically not active. With a population males, 75.9 percent are employed, 2.4 percent unemployed and 21.7 percent are economically not active. Among the female population, 70.5 percent are employed whiles 2.6 percent are not employed. The proportion of economically not active females is 26.9 percent. 

Those within the age group 40-44 years recorded the highest proportion (93.4%) of employed persons followed by 45-49 years group (92.6%) with the least (27.8%) recorded by15-19 years age group. This is because most of the people within the age group (15-19) are either schooling or in apprenticeship training. The highest proportions (5.8%) of the unemployed and 69.9 percent of the economically not active were recorded by the age groups 20-24 years and 15-19 years respectively.

Occupation

Occupation refers to the type of work persons are engaged in an establishment where they work. Questions were asked of persons 5 years and older who worked 7 days before the census night, and those who did not work but had a job to return to as well as those unemployed but had worked before. All these persons were classified by the kind of work they were engaged in. The items of information in the table concentrated on persons aged 15 years and older in Mpohor District.

Table 4.3 shows that, the highest proportion (47.7%) of the employed population 15 years and older, are skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers followed by plant, machine operators and assembling workers (16.5%). As expected, female workers in the service and sales sector accounts for 21.6 percent of the 9,203 employed female population. They also recorded 8.7 percent in plant, machine operators and assembling class; an area that is largely male dominated.

Industry

The distribution of the employed population 15 years and older by industry and sex is presented in Table 4.4. Agriculture, (including forestry and fishing) is the major industry in Mpohor District employing (49.3%) of the employed population. Mining and quarrying, manufacturing and the educational sector is employing 13.3 percent, 12.3 percent and 2.3 percent respectively. The Agricultural sector employs 50.2 percent followed by mining and quarrying (18.0%) of the employed male population. Furthermore, agricultural sector also employs 48.3 percent of the employed female population whiles the wholesale and retail sector including repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles employs 14.1 percent.

Employment Status

From Table 4.5, majority of the population aged 15 years and older (58.9%) are self-employed without employees, followed by those who are employees (21.4%) and the least being ‘Other’ (0.1%).

Employment Sector

Employment sector refers to the sector in which a person works. Table 4.6 shows employed population aged 15 years and older by employment sector and sex. From the Table, the proportion of the population who are employed in the private informal sector is 84.8 percent, followed by the private formal with 10.9 percent. This pattern is replicated in the sex compositions where majority of both males and females are employed in the private informal sector followed by Private Formal sector. The least among the sectors is Other International Organizations.