Pakistan’s economy has created 5.5 million jobs in the last three years, on an average of 1.84 million jobs a year, which is much greater than the yearly average of new jobs created in the 2008-18 decade, as per the findings of Labour Force Survey (LFS) published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Though the Sindh province experienced the opposite situation, where the unemployment rate significantly went down to 3.9% in three years, however, all other three provinces showed an increase in the unemployment rate.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) recorded the highest rate at 8.8% during the last fiscal year, as said by Labour Force Survey 2020-21.
Moreover, the survey conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics revealed that the national unemployment rate stood at 6.3% at the end of the last fiscal year, which is more than the previous year but greater than the 5.8% noted at the end of the PML-N regime.
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The PBS and the Planning Ministry have not yet officially released the survey.
The findings of the survey were validated on Wednesday by a technical committee, including official and independent experts, as per the officials of the Ministry of Planning and Development. The PBS recorded 6,808 enumeration blocks and 99,904 households for the survey purposes.
Additionally, the findings revealed that the number of employed people showed an increase of 67.3 million by June 2021, up from 61.7 million at the end of the PML-N tenure.
However, the official unemployment rate in June 2018 was 5.8% increasing to 6.3% at the end of the third year of the PTI rule. The lowest unemployment rate was recorded in Sindh at 3.9% which is governed by the Pakistan Peoples Party but it was at the peak in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 8.8%, followed by 6.8% in Punjab –the two provinces ruled by the ruling party.
Prime Minister Imran Khan had pledged to generate 10 million jobs during his government tenure and the creation of 5.5 million jobs proposed that the economy might create a total of 9 million jobs by 2023 at the current rate.
