LAHORE: Responding on the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ recently-released report Labour Force Survey of 2014-15, the Institute for Policy Reforms has flayed the government over increasing unemployment in the country.
The IPR said that between 2012-13 and 2014-15, only 1.3 million workers apparently entered the labour market. In past, the number entering used to be 1.5 million workers per annum, it added.
Therefore, given the conditions in the labour market, almost 1.7 million potential workers have either opted not to join the labour force or there has been a major understatement of the labour force size by PBS.
According to IPR factsheet, the number of jobs created between 2012-13 and 2014-15 was 1.4 million. Accordingly, the decrease in the number of unemployed workers was 100,000. As such, by the end of 2014-15, the number of unemployed workers was 3.6 million.
However, if the number of discouraged workers is included and the normal increase in labour force allowed for, the total number of unemployed rises to 5.3 million.
According to IPR fact sheet the reported unemployment rate is just under 6%. Apparently, it has fallen slightly from the level in 2012-13. However, if appropriate adjustment is made the unemployment rate rises to 8.5% in 2014-15.
This is the highest rate of unemployment in the last thirteen years. An extremely worrying feature of the current unemployment situation is that the rate among literate workers is more than twice that among illiterate workers.
In fact, the highest rate of unemployment, three times above the national average, is observed in the case of highly educated workers with either degree or post-graduate qualifications.
Similarly, the unemployment rate among female and young workers is also relatively high. There is little difference in the unemployment rate between urban and rural areas of the country. After 2012-13, the unemployment rate has improved the most in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
However, employment growth has been the fastest in Punjab. IPR fact sheet added that significant changes have occurred in the sectoral distribution of employment.
Employment has fallen somewhat in agriculture. The positive finding is that almost two-thirds of the new jobs created during the last two years have been in the manufacturing sector.
Only one-third of the additional jobs are in the services sectors, which largely fall in the informal economy. The prospect of finding `decent work` is much higher in the formal sector.
Currently, about 27% of the workers are engaged in the formal sector. IPR further added that an important development is the trend towards increased labour force participation rate of women in Pakistan, which is currently one of the lowest in the world. It has risen significantly after 2008-09 by almost three percentage points, to reach 22%. Meanwhile, the labour force participation rate for males has actually fallen by 1.5 percentage points.
