LAHORE: The overall unemployment rate in Punjab has reached 6.9pc with the highest rate of unemployment by age-group found amongst the youth (aged 15-29) at 10.9pc and the female youth with Master’s degree make up over 23pc of all unemployed female youth.

According to a research conducted by Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE (Policy Research, Innovation, Development & Education), using data from the Labour Force Survey-2020-21, among all the divisions of Punjab, Rawalpindi has the highest youth unemployment rate is a little more than 17pc.

“With the unemployment rate of females being substantially higher than males (8.32pc vs. 6.06pc) and that of urban residents being relatively higher than the rate of their rural counterparts (7.94pc vs 6.11pc).

The analysis of division-wise youth unemployment rate varies from as low as 4.45pc for Bahawalpur division to as high as 17.78pc for Rawalpindi division,” reads the report.

Unemployment rate reached 7pc by 2021; Punjab’s youth population equivalent to entire population of Canada

The distribution of unemployed youth by level of education indicates that the youth having education level of ‘Matric but below Intermediate’, make up the highest proportion of the unemployed youth at 20.01pc while the youth having ‘less than one year of education’ comprises the lowest share of unemployed youth at 0.39pc. What’s surprising is that 23.52pc of unemployed female youth in Punjab have a Master’s level degree. This share is over seven times higher than the corresponding share of the unemployed male youth (around 3pc of unemployed males have a Master’s degree).

The research analysis shows that the Lahore division has the highest population (20.7m) in the whole province whereas the Sahiwal division has the lowest population (7.9m). Gujranwala division has the highest rural population of 10.9m and the Lahore division has the highest urban population of 14.4m in Punjab.

The analysis shows that in Punjab alone, there are 31m youngsters aged 18-29 and the youth population of Punjab alone is equivalent to the entire population size of Canada.

Youth unemployment refers to the number of youth (15-29 years old) population that is economically active but currently without work and searching for employment. This measure does not include the people such as full-time students or those who are not looking for work, i.e., those considered economically inactive individuals. This indicator serves as a measure of potential youth labour market entrants that remain under-utilized.

“The study’s most alarming finding is that a higher share of educated youth are unemployed compared to their lesser educated counterparts. Education, if seen to be not delivering dividends, would lead to people dropping off from the education stream and the vast pool of educated urban youth could also cause social issues (if not already causing ones),” Bilal Gilani, executive director at Gallup Pakistan, said.

Dr Lubna Shahnaz, the chief executive officer at PRIDE, said: ‘Labour force statistics usually available at national or provincial level do not adequately capture the labour market dynamics across different regions even within a particular province. More disaggregated statistics at divisional level would enable a more in-depth examination of the labour market situation and facilitate in the development of relevant policies and programs at a grass roots level”.

The current series of reports would be looking at the Labour Force Survey 2020-21, which is a large-scale survey, covering close to 100,000 households, conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2023