In Ghana today, the heartbeat of the economy doesn’t echo through office buildings or boardrooms. It pulses through roadside stalls, inside containers-turned-salons, under market umbrellas, and through the taps of smartphones in the hands of young entrepreneurs. This is the informal sector, unstructured, under-supported, and often underestimated, but it’s where the real work is happening.
Every morning, long before city traffic builds, young men and women across the country are already busy. A woman sets up her table to sell porridge and bread to commuters.
Down the road, a young man is welding metal gates in front of a customer’s home. Nearby, two girls are taking stock of shea butter jars they’ll promote on Instagram later that day. These jobs don’t require CVs. They don’t involve long hiring processes. But they pay rent, feed families, and build local economies.
For most young people, this is the job market they know, not by design, but by reality. Ghana’s informal sector absorbs millions of workers, many of them youth, and remains the primary source of employment in both urban and rural areas. It stretches from tailoring, hairdressing, carpentry, and farming to digital retail, delivery services, and creative work.
One of the most visible features of this sector is its accessibility. You don’t need a degree to start mixing cement or sewing clothes. Many start learning on the job, through apprenticeships, family trades, or even trial and error. In communities where job opportunities are limited, young people teach themselves to make a way. They study trends, find gaps in the market, and build from whatever they have. It’s learning by doing, and succeeding against the odds.
And while the jobs may be “informal,” the effort is anything but casual. Many workers in this space put in longer hours than their counterparts in formal employment. A food vendor, for instance, starts prepping before dawn and finishes cleaning late in the evening. A roadside mechanic spends full days under the sun, fixing everything from motorbikes to trucks. These are full-time commitments, even if they don’t come with contracts or insurance.
The rise of digital platforms has also changed the way informal businesses operate. WhatsApp has become a tool for taking orders. Instagram is a portfolio. MoMo is the register. Young vendors use TikTok to showcase their products, mobile apps to track finances, and Google Maps to find customers. It’s an evolving economy, shaped by necessity and driven by creativity, and it’s moving fast.
Still, the challenges are real. Most of these workers operate without business registration, access to credit, or any formal training in marketing or finance. A bad sales week can threaten an entire month’s stability. Healthcare, maternity leave, retirement savings, none of these are guaranteed. And because they’re not officially counted in payroll statistics or tax systems, their contributions often go unrecognized in national economic planning.
Yet, even with these challenges, the sector continues to grow. It thrives on resilience, community networks, and the ability to adapt quickly. When one stream dries up, a new idea takes its place. When the economy shifts, they shift with it. Whether it’s selling thrift clothes online, starting a mobile food cart, or teaching music to kids in the neighborhood, the informal sector keeps finding new forms.
It’s also deeply local. The success of these businesses often depends on trust and relationships built over time. A hairdresser grows her client base through word of mouth. A welder keeps his workshop alive because the community knows he delivers on time. These micro-networks sustain entire neighborhoods, economically and socially.
There’s something else the informal sector teaches us: employment doesn’t always look like what we were taught to expect. It doesn’t always wear a name tag or sit in a meeting room. Sometimes, it wears an apron. Sometimes, it’s balancing a tray of snacks on the head. Sometimes, it’s working behind a cracked phone screen, pushing out content, taking payments, and replying to customers.
So when we talk about Ghana’s job market, we must remember it’s not only those with desks and ID cards who are keeping things running. It’s also those with hustle in their hands, strategy in their heads, and no time to wait for perfect conditions.
The informal sector is not the future of work, it is the present. It deserves policies that meet it where it is: on the ground, online, in the heat, in the hustle. Because in Ghana today, the real job market doesn’t wear a suit, it wears work boots, aprons, helmets, and hope.
By Leo Nelson