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The Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations (MELR) is working with stakeholders to streamline standards and centralise employment statistics generated within the productive sectors for effective reporting and targeting.

This, the Ministry said, would ensure easy disaggregation and analysis of employment data by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies for use by policymakers towards national development planning.

Mr Ignatius Baffour Awuah, the Sector Minister, said this in a speech read on his behalf by Mr Kizito Ballans, the Chief Director, during an Inter-sectoral Stakeholder Meeting on Employment Impact Assessment, Employment Targeting and Reporting and Related Matters in Accra on Tuesday.

The outcome of the meeting is expected to be adopted for Employment Impact Assessment in the Public Sector.

It was organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

It aims at enabling government to report creditably on employment numbers as well as set realistic targets for the productive sectors with corresponding allocation of resources to achieve those targets.

Mr Awuah said data on employment creation was not readily available to guide evidence-based policymaking, and as a result, statistics churned out by various institutions on employment were always at variance to one another.

He said employment reporting was fragmented, uncoordinated and remained at the productive sector level without any form of verification or validation from a statutory body.

“Employment is a macroeconomic issue and cross-cutting one, which requires the involvement of stakeholders. As a macroeconomic issue, one will expect that, every year, there will be national and sectoral targets on employment just as it is done for Gross Domestic Product growth, inflation, fiscal deficit, and exchange rate,” he said.

Mr Awuah said it was through targets setting that the country could monitor progress made on employment creation at the various levels.

He said the importance of Jobs Impact Assessment was evident in the country’s policy planning processes and discrepancies associated with employment data.

“The call for Jobs Impact Assessment has been on the rise as government is interested in determining which sectors of the economy create more jobs over other sectors for similar expenditure under similar circumstances,” he said.

However, the role of the Ministry in employment assessment is to coordinate these employment interventions, evaluate the number of jobs created and ensure they conform to decent work standards and report periodically to the public.

Mr Awuah said the meeting would facilitate the development of a framework for employment targeting and reporting for use by public sectors to aid forecasting, evidence-informed policymaking and development planning.

He expressed the hope that the discussions would deepen the growing consensus on instituting employment impact assessment in all sectors towards the creation of decent opportunities for the labour force.