Pakistan is a young country that measures its young late and loosely. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) reports that 58.3 percent of the population is below the age of 25, with 46.3 million aged 15 to 24. Even that count is an extrapolation. PBS grows the 2023 census figures at an assumed annual rate while official population projections are still being finalised, and the labour force survey before the latest one was fielded in 2020/21. A country adding millions of workers cannot steer by a four year old map.

What the map shows is sobering. Between the two rounds the labour force grew from 71.8 million to 85.6 million, about 3.5 million people a year, while the number of unemployed rose from 4.5 million to 5.9 million. Unemployment among 15 to 24 year olds climbed from 11.1 to 12.5 percent on the comparable definition. A companion PBS report finds that only 38.7 percent of that age group is employed, and that 28.4 percent are not in employment, education or training, a rate running from 24.8 percent in Punjab to 36.0 percent in Balochistan.

The deeper lesson is that........

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