Recent research carried out by PRIDE and Gallup Pakistan has revealed concerning figures regarding youth unemployment rates in Punjab, with an overall unemployment rate of 6.69%.
The study, which used data from the Labour Force Survey 2020-21, highlighted gender and regional disparities in unemployment rates.
The survey found that the unemployment rate among females was significantly higher than that among males, standing at 8.32% and 6.06%, respectively.
Moreover, the study showed that urban residents had a relatively higher unemployment rate compared to their rural counterparts, with rates of 7.94% and 6.11%, respectively.
The research also analysed division-wise youth unemployment rates in Punjab and revealed significant variation, with rates ranging from as low as 4.45% in Bahawalpur division to a staggering 17.78% in Rawalpindi division.
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The study also found that those with a ‘matric but below Intermediate’ education constituted the highest proportion of unemployed youth, accounting for 20.01% of the unemployed.
In contrast, youth with ‘less than one year of education’ represented the lowest share of unemployed youth, accounting for only 0.39%.
The research showed that around 23.52% of unemployed female youth in Punjab hold a Master’s degree, a share over seven times higher than that of unemployed males with the same level of education, which stood at around 3%.
The study also revealed the population distribution in different divisions of Punjab, with Lahore division having the highest population of 20.7 million and Sahiwal division having the lowest at 7.9 million.
Gujranwala division had the highest rural population of 10.9 million, while the Lahore division had the highest urban population of 14.4 million in the province.
The youth population of Punjab alone is equivalent to the entire population of Canada. The Executive Director of Gallup Pakistan, Bilal Gilani, expressed concern over the higher unemployment rates among educated youth compared to their less educated counterparts.
He emphasised the need for education to deliver tangible outcomes to prevent potential dropouts and address the challenges posed by a large pool of unemployed urban youth.
The CEO of PRIDE, Dr Lubna Shahnaz, highlighted the importance of disaggregated statistics at the divisional level to gain a deeper understanding of the labour market dynamics in different regions.
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She emphasised that such data would facilitate the development of targeted policies and programs at the grassroots level. The collaboration between Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE aims to analyse and disseminate policy-relevant economic and social data to contribute to informed decision-making processes in Pakistan.
The ongoing series of reports focuses on the Labour Force Survey 2020-21, a comprehensive survey conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics covering nearly 100,000 households.
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