STRIPPED of its rhetoric, the prime minister’s announcement of Pakistan’s first National Youth Employment Policy is nothing more than hollow promises. While long on aspirations, the announcement is short on details. For starters, how does the government intend to create employment for millions when the economy itself is struggling? How does it plan to raise women’s participation in the labour force to 35pc? What exactly does a ‘10pc quota’ for start-ups mean? Is the government promising to procure from young technology companies, reserve financing for them and allocate public contracts or simply encourage entrepreneurship? Is the policy about technology-based businesses, conventional small enterprises or self-employment? Explanations matter because the youth problem is fundamentally an economic one. Without answers, the announcement remains closer to political rhetoric than a workable policy.

Pakistan has a rapidly growing working-age population entering a labour market that is failing to absorb it. The government cannot solve this problem through public-sector recruitment. Its capacity to create jobs is severely constrained by fiscal pressures, a bloated public payroll and the need to contain expenditure. Hence, the private sector has to be the principal engine of growth and employment. However, for most of the years under the current political leadership, the economy has been trapped in survival mode. Macroeconomic stabilisation has understandably dominated policymaking. Domestic investors remain cautious, while foreign investment has remained far below what Pakistan needs to expand productive capacity and create employment at scale. Stabilisation cannot produce enough jobs, which is causing unease among various stakeholders. A federal minister recently described the economy as being in survival mode and told a business audience that laptops cannot be a substitute for jobs, an obvious jab at the PM’s signature youth initiative. Freebies cannot substitute for an economy capable of employing people. The real test of a youth employment policy, therefore, should not be the number of laptops distributed, students trained or start-ups announced. It should be the pace of economic growth and the number of sustainable private sector jobs created. That requires the government to address the harder questions of reforms to make manufacturing, exports, technology, agriculture and services expand rapidly enough to absorb new workers. No job strategy can succeed in an economy constrained by low productivity and sluggish growth.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2026