DETERMINANTS OF PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT AMONG STEM PROFESSIONALS: EVIDENCE FROM GHANA

Ghana's digital transformation agenda requires more technical skills from its public sector, yet STEM graduates disproportionately flow toward private employment, leaving government institutions chronically understaffed in data analytics, engineering, and information systems. This study investigates the determinants of public sector employment among STEM professionals in Ghana by examining the demographic, socio-economic, perceptual, motivational, and structural factors shaping both career intentions and realised employment outcomes. The study uses Human Capital Theory, Labour Market Segmentation Theory, Labour Market Matching Theory, Public Service Motivation Theory, and Expectancy Theory, to conduct a quantitative cross-sectional survey design administered to 312 respondents comprising final-year STEM students, masters students and recent graduates from Ashesi University, Berekuso. Five binary logistic regression models are estimated across student and graduate sub-samples to identify the significant predictors of public sector career choice at both the intention and realisation stages. The results reveal that gender significantly predicts public sector career intention, with female students more likely to intend government employment, while a directional reversal at the graduate stage, where male graduates are more likely to actually be employed in the public sector which points to structural barriers preventing female intentions from converting into realised employment outcomes. Perceived skill-job alignment emerges as the strongest predictor of public sector intent among students, and occupational prestige and effort-reward expectancy perceptions are also significant positive drivers. Most unexpectedly, public service motivation is consistently and significantly negatively associated with public sector outcomes across all model specifications, suggesting that highly motivated graduates redirect their civic values toward NGOs and international organisations rather than the civil service. The study concludes that STEM underrepresentation in Ghana's public sector reflects a complex interaction of structural recruitment barriers, weak skill-alignment communication, and an institutional culture that fails to capture the motivation of the graduates most disposed toward public service, and proposes five evidence-based recommendations directed at the Public Services Commission, government ministries, and university career development offices. Keywords: STEM professionals, public sector employment, labour market matching, public service motivation, binary logistic regression, Ghana.