Opinion: Absorption of youth |
The Prime Minister recently launched the Youth Laptop Scheme 2025. Laptops were awarded to high achieving students at the launching ceremony.
While addressing the ceremony, he stated that his government would not hesitate to spend even five hundred billion rupees to equip the youth with modern gadgets and skills. Since 2011, 50 billion rupees has been spent to equip young Pakistanis with gadgets.
However, the magnitude of the youth absorption problem is substantially more than can be catered for by distribution of 100,000 computers to youth.
Pakistan has historically experienced a bulge of youth population. This has been the consequence of higher birth rates earlier. Fortunately, according to the Population and Housing Census of 2023, the bulge has peaked. The share of youth population has been recorded at 18.5 percent of the total population. This implies that the number of youth population, aged 15 to 24 years, was 44.5 million in 2023, and increasing annually by 1 million.
The fundamental question is the number of youth who are idle, that is, who are neither searching for a job nor are undergoing higher education, and the number of youth who are in the labour force but are currently unemployed.
The Population and Housing Census has given the magnitude of the number of ‘idle’ workers who are neither in the labour force or undergoing higher education. There is need to augment this number with youth who are active in the labour force but are currently unemployed. Priority will need to be given to absorption of these youth by provision of reemployment opportunities.
The........