The Population and Housing Census of 2023 provides very useful information on the living conditions of the over 241 million people of Pakistan.

The objective of this article is to focus on the size of the youth population, aged 15 to 24 years, and determine if there continues to be a youth bulge. This is followed by an approach to and the resulting quantification of the number of idle youth in the country.

The above analyses are conducted both at the national and the provincial levels from the estimates provided for each province by the Census. There is need to recognize the outstanding quality of the Census, which was the first-ever digital census. It has given estimates right down to the tehsil/taluka level throughout Pakistan.

Prior to presentation of the findings of the 2023 Population Census, estimates are given for earlier years for Pakistan by the International Labor Organization (ILO), highlighted in the World Development Indicators (WDI) data base of the World Bank. Also, a comparison is made with the position of youth in other South Asian countries.

According to the WDI, there is evidence of the peaking of the youth bulge in Pakistan. The share in population of youth, aged 15 to 24 years, was 19.2 percent in 1980. This share had increased to 19.4 percent by 2000. The share reached a peak in 2010 at 20.9 percent and has since declined to 20.0 percent by 2023.

The trend is in line with that revealed by the Population Censuses of 1998, 2017 and 2023. The share of youth was estimated at 15.1 percent in 1998. This share increased to 19.1 percent by 2017. However, the increase in the youth bulge appears to have peaked and has come down somewhat to 18.5 percent in 2023. The annual growth rate of youth population between 2017 and 2023 has been estimated at........

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