This paper seeks to analyse the causes of unemployment in Ghana from labour demand and
supply perspectives based on cross sectional data. A logit regression estimation technique is
applied to two different household survey datasets of 2008 and 2013 to capture the effect of
labour demand and supply on unemployment. Using education and age as capability
variables to represent supply factors, unemployment is found to increase with education, and
declines with age, confirming higher unemployment rate among the youth, than the old. The
paper also observes a strong influence of demand factors on unemployment based on
relatively higher incidence of unemployment fulltime jobseekers relative to part-time
jobseekers and seekers of wage-employment and self-employment compared with those
seeking any job. Other factors such as the individual’s reservation wage, marital status, sex,
and poverty status as well as their rural-urban location are also found to cause
unemployment in Ghana. Unemployment as a result of the inability of individuals to obtain a
job of their choice in the midst of strong economic growth in Ghana suggests weak
employment content of growth. In contrast, an increasing phenomenon of unemployment with
education also reflects a problem of skill mismatch between skills churn out by education and
training institutions and skills requirement by firms in the labour market. The originality of
the paper and its contribution to existing literature largely emanate from the inclusion of
demand factors in a cross sectional analysis of causes of unemployment.