Unemployment In Pakistan.

Employed labor force is defined as all persons of ten years of age and more who worked at least one hour during the reference period and were either "paid employees" or "self employed". This defined by the government of Pakistan. The table below shows the amount of people employed in Pakistan. Of the labor force of 42.75 million 39.4 are employed. 27.6 of them working in the rural areas and 11.8 in the urban areas. We can see the same aspect of the higher population rate in the rural area has caused a higher employment rate in the rural areas. The government has neglected the unregistered people who are actively participating in the labor force but are not employed because there are no jobs available to them. This cause is the negligence of the government and of the people as well.

The major problem can be seen in the table below. It is the unemployment rate in Pakistan. According to the government Unemployment is defined as all persons ten years of age and above who during the period under reference were (a) without work i.e. were not in paid employment or self-employed, (b) currently available for work i.e. were available for paid employment or self employment and (c) seeking work i.e. had taken specific steps in a specified period to seek paid employment or self employment. The table reveals that unemployment has increased from 5.89 percent in 1998 to 7.82 percent in 2003. Similarly unemployment in rural areas, which was 4.98 percent in 1998, has risen to 6.94 percent in 2003 and urban unemployment has enhanced from 7.95 percent in 1999 to 9.92 percent in 2003. We should see that this is only the official record, in reality the unemployment is far higher than this. We can see that the unemployment rate in the rural areas is far greater than in the urban areas. This is because there are less job opportunities in the rural area as there are more industries in the urban area, which require labor. Agriculture is the main income of the country, it is constituted in the rural areas but the machinery has taken over manpower and therefore there are less job opportunity. There is still a lot to be done in that sector because the production is not up to the mark. The small-scale industries are also not working due the bad economic conditions.

The unemployment in Pakistan is both structural and frictional. This is because the country is trying to change the economy and working on a lot of other sectors but it is unable to succeed and people lose their jobs at times. The low labor rate tends to make people look for new jobs but they do not realize that there are no jobs available. This causes unemployment.

There are a lot of reasons for this unemployment in Pakistan. Pakistan is an under developed countries are there is very less foreign investment due to which the economy stays low and there is less development therefore less job opportunities. The other big factor is that there are a lot of spending on defense as the government is suppose to defend a 1600 km border with India and Pakistan is not on good terms with India. There is a lot of political instability in Pakistan. It has almost a change of government every two years and none of them has been able to make proper economic reforms is the past. This was because the government took time in integrating in to the system. Corruption level is also very high in Pakistan. It is hindrance in the development. Therefore there are less job opportunities.   The literacy rate is low as well so people do not know a lot about the policies. Therefore a lot of people are unaware of what is happening in the big cities.

It is said that to every action there is an equal an opposite reaction. There are some effects of the unemployment. Unemployment in a country means that the resources are not being fully utilized. This means economy will not produce at a higher rate. Thus the economy will not grow as fast as it can. Not only this, the resources for other areas do don as well for example education and health. There are a lot of social problems as well because people are usually disliked if they have no job. The crime rate increases with high unemployment because people get frustrated and the poverty forces them to earn dirty money or steal it. The poverty level increases as well because there is no source of income and people get poorer. This leads to low self-esteem and people tend to commit suicide as well because they are unable to support their family.