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A recently published work titled "Stick-in-the-Mud," by the Economic Advisory Group (EAG), an independent think tank, vividly illustrates the sluggish growth in labor productivity in Pakistan over the past three decades. This poor performance becomes strikingly apparent when compared to peer countries in South Asia and other Asian economies that have rapidly transformed, and significantly improved citizens' standards of living.

Dr. Ahmed Pirzada, an economist from Bristol University, and his colleagues note that, between 1990 and 2018, Pakistan's labor productivity increased by only 45%, implying an average annual growth rate of a mere 1.33%. In contrast, other South Asian economies experienced more than a doubling of labor productivity. Specifically, Bangladesh and India saw increases of 191% and 263%, respectively, while China's labor productivity surged over eight times during the same period, with average annual growth rates of 3.88%, 4.72%, and 8.12% for the respective countries.

The substantially higher productivity growth among peer group countries relative to Pakistan has resulted in these countries seeing a significant shift of the workforce away from agriculture towards manufacturing and services. Such a shift has been conspicuously absent in Pakistan. While the share of the agricultural sector in employment decreased by about 10% from the 1990s to the present, this contrasts starkly with a 40-percentage........

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