The issue of ghost jobs has taken center stage in Ghana’s political and economic debate after the recent elections, with sharp commentary from market researcher and IMANI Africa contributor, Kay Cudjoe.
For him, the statistics released by international institutions and the government are not just numbers but lived realities for millions of Ghanaians who continue to struggle daily to find meaningful work.
According to the World Bank, between 2012 and 2023, Ghana’s working-age population grew by 2.7 million. Yet within the same period, the country created only 250,000 net jobs.
“That is not a statistic; it is a story. It is the story of young men pacing in traffic with sachet water, of graduates clutching brown envelopes in the sun, of women selling airtime by the roadside while holding degrees they cannot use. It is the story of those who wake up every day in search of work and come home with nothing but exhaustion. Economists call it ‘jobless growth’ because GDP climbs, but ordinary lives remain stranded on the ground.”
Kay Cudjoe
In his view, this reality is far removed from the confident declarations made on the campaign trail by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the former Vice President.
Dr. Bawumia claimed his administration had created 2.6 million jobs, repeating the figure like gospel while daring anyone to challenge it.
Yet, as Cudjoe argued, such figures seem to exist only in payroll registers or SSNIT contributor lists, where one worker leaving and another replacing them is counted as new job creation. By that arithmetic, funerals become birth certificates.
Cudjoe explained that “the contradiction is painful because we lived it.” He noted that when the economy was buckling under debt, inflation, and despair, Dr. Bawumia, who once styled himself as Ghana’s economic problem-solver, abandoned economics altogether. Instead of explaining inflation, exchange rates, and debt, he pivoted toward the rhetoric of digitisation.
The so-called digital transformation, he continued, looked polished on PowerPoint slides but half-baked in practice.
“What is the value of a digital address system when young people have no physical address they can afford to rent? What is the point of mobile money interoperability when the pockets of the youth are interoperably empty?”
Kay Cudjoe
Cudjoe said the World Bank’s assessment aligns more closely with lived experience. Only 13 percent of Ghanaian workers are in high-quality jobs.
Youth participation is shrinking, women are locked in insecure work, and migration has become the ultimate escape route.
For many, the job crisis has turned into a migration crisis. Those risking their lives across deserts and seas are not doing so because they lack patriotism, but because they lack options.
Meanwhile, those who remain in Ghana are forced to hustle in piecemeal jobs that strip away dignity. Taxi drivers with degrees, teachers moonlighting as mobile money vendors, and nurses braiding hair after hours paint a picture not of growth but of survival.
It is, in Cudjoe’s words, “a generation learning to stretch coins into miracles while politicians stretch statistics into illusions.”
Voters Deliver Harsh Verdict Against Ghost Jobs
Kay Cudjoe emphasized that the December 7, 2024, elections captured the growing frustration of ordinary Ghanaians. John Dramani Mahama’s sweeping victory, which delivered both the presidency and a two-thirds parliamentary majority, signaled a decisive shift.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s campaign—largely driven by statistics and catchy slogans—fell apart at the polls. His much-publicized claim of creating 2.6 million jobs proved hollow, as the unemployed demonstrated through their votes that they were not invisible figures but real citizens demanding change.
Cudjoe argued that the message from voters was unmistakable. Numbers and spreadsheets could not replace lived truth. Citizens were no longer willing to clap for illusions when their own realities told a different story.
“Now comes the real work. A two-thirds majority is not a cushion; it is a responsibility. The new government must do what its predecessors failed to do: convert growth into livelihoods. It means building the power, roads, and irrigation that allow private investment to expand.
“It means aligning schools with skills the market actually wants, so that graduates are not trained for jobs that do not exist. It means reforming agriculture into an industry of dignity, where young farmers earn wages that compete with office jobs. It means making sure a diploma is not just a piece of paper but a passport to a decent wage.”
Kay Cudjoe
Cudjoe stressed that jobs are not abstract statistics. They are what keep families intact, enable parents to support their children, and allow graduates to plan for the future rather than plotting escape routes abroad.
When jobs vanish, marriages collapse, children drop out of school, and hope becomes too expensive to sustain.
He described Bawumia’s 2.6 million ghost jobs as one of Ghana’s greatest political illusions—an illusion that could never pay rent, fill empty saucepans, or silence a landlord’s knock.
For him, illusions collapse when tested against hunger and unemployment.
A Call For Real Reform
Cudjoe noted that although many may quickly dismiss such claims as deliberate falsehoods, the real issue runs deeper within Ghana’s political culture.
Leaders often present replacement jobs as though they were entirely new opportunities, portray short-term contracts as lasting solutions, and count internships as proof of prosperity.
This culture of make-believe, he argued, means that while GDP figures may rise on paper, genuine opportunities for everyday citizens continue to diminish.
The election outcome, therefore, was not just a rejection of Bawumia as an individual but of an entire style of governance built on slogans and statistical illusions.
Ghanaians, Cudjoe concluded, are weary of promises of industrial revolutions that never arrive and digitisation drives that digitise nothing beyond speeches.
The challenge before the new administration is immense. Converting growth into jobs will require bold reforms in education, public finance, and agriculture, while also rooting out corruption and confronting entrenched interests.
More importantly, it will demand honesty in the national conversation. If jobs are lacking, leaders must admit it. If the journey is long, citizens must be told the truth.
“For now, Ghanaians have spoken clearly. They chose reality over illusion, dignity over deception. They chose to believe in their own experience rather than a politician’s PowerPoint. They chose to end the era of ghost jobs.”
Kay Cudjoe
In that choice lies a fundamental truth—Ghanaians are not ghosts. They are real, they are watching, and they are waiting.
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