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Backlog Crisis: 145,000 Unemployed Health and Education Professionals Strain Ghana’s Budget — Deputy Finance Minister
Ghana is grappling with a massive backlog of unemployed professionals in the health and education sectors, a situation that is increasingly putting severe pressure on the national budget, Deputy Minister of Finance Thomas Nyarko Ampem has revealed.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, Mr Ampem disclosed that since 2019, the country has accumulated a backlog of 74,000 health professionals and 71,000 education professionals who are still waiting to be recruited into the public sector.
“If you look at the health sector, every year from 2010 to date, about 26,000 professionals are trained, and out of that, only about 13,000 are recruited annually. From 2019 to date, we have had a backlog of about 74,000 unemployed health professionals who are waiting to be recruited,” he explained.
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The situation is not unique to the health sector. Mr Ampem explained that colleges of education and universities produce between 35,000 and 81,000 graduates annually, but the public sector is unable to absorb all of them, leaving thousands jobless each year.
“There are about 14,000 of them who are not employed each year, and we have a backlog of about 71,000 unemployed education professionals,” he said.
The deputy minister highlighted the fiscal implications of recruiting all the backlog, stating that the government would need approximately GH₵12 billion annually to put them on the payroll.
“If we put the 74,000 health professionals on the payroll, we will need an additional GH₵6 billion annually to absorb them—and another GH₵6 billion for the education sector. This is just for the backlog of professionals who have not been employed,” Mr Ampem stated.
Beyond the backlog, Mr Ampem also acknowledged the plight of over 12,000 workers who have already been employed but remain unpaid, stressing that the government is taking steps to address salary arrears and clear the bottlenecks.
The revelation underscores a critical policy challenge for government: balancing fiscal discipline with the urgent need to employ trained professionals in essential public sectors like health and education.
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