The digital Population and Housing Census of 2023 conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has come up with an amazing and extremely worrying estimate. Apparently, the overall national unemployment rate in 2023 was as high as 22 percent. This is substantially higher than the estimate of the rate of unemployment in any previous year in Pakistan’s history.

The last Labour Force Survey was carried out by the PBS in 2020-21. At that time, the national unemployment rate was recorded at 6.3 percent. This implies that there has been a quantum jump in Pakistan in the number of unemployed workers from 4.5 million in 2020-21 to as many as 18.7 million in 2023. This represents an unbelievable increase of 315 percent in three years.

There is a need to identify the numbers of the labour force, employed and unemployed in the Census of 2023 and compare them........

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