Pakistan Jobs Market

THE NATIONAL PICTURE · MONTHLY BRIEFING

Pakistan job market report — October 2026

Understand work, opportunity and participation across Pakistan. Official statistics, useful comparisons, and a clearer view of the labour market.

Explore the report ↓Browse editions
A monthly edition, not a monthly survey. The figures below are annual national estimates; each shows its observation year. Retrieved on 01/10/2026. Official series can be revised between editions. See the latest edition →

The longer view

How Pakistan’s labour market is changing

Annual series

5.42%2025 observation

0.02.55.07.510.02014: 1.83%20142015: 3.57%2016: 2.29%20162017: 3.20%2018: 4.08%20182019: 4.83%2020: 5.99%20202021: 6.34%2022: 5.29%20222023: 5.24%2024: 5.49%20242025: 5.42%2025

Annual observations, not monthly changes. Hover or focus a point to inspect it. Missing observations are not replaced with zero.

Source: World Bank / ILO · SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS ↗
View chart data
Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate)
YearPercent
20141.83%
20153.57%
20162.29%
20173.20%
20184.08%
20194.83%
20205.99%
20216.34%
20225.29%
20235.24%
20245.49%
20255.42%

Official Pakistan employment · PBS

Employment by occupation

2024-25 · share of employed persons (%) · PSCO-2015 occupation groups.

  • Managers2.3%
  • Professionals6.1%
  • Technicians & associate professionals4.4%
  • Clerical support workers1.8%
  • Service and sales workers17.2%
  • Skilled agricultural, forestry & fishery workers28.0%
  • Craft & related trades workers13.7%
  • Plant/machine operators & assemblers8.3%
  • Elementary occupations18.3%
PBS LFS 2024-25 · Table 4.7, page 43 ↗

Official Pakistan employment · PBS

Employment by province

2024-25 · employed persons in millions.

  • Punjab44.7m
  • Sindh17.5m
  • Khyber Pakhtunkhwa11.3m
  • Balochistan3.8m

Pakistan total: 77.2 million employed people.

PBS LFS 2024-25 · Table 4.1, page 37 ↗

Employed persons aged 10 and over, 19th ICLS framework. Survey estimates, not vacancies or monthly hiring. These survey figures use a different population and methodology from the World Bank / ILO trend charts.

Published rounded values are preserved: occupation shares sum to 100.1%, and provincial counts to 77.3 million versus the published Pakistan total of 77.2 million. This table reports four provinces; no separate estimates are supplied here for ICT, AJK or Gilgit-Baltistan. Reviewed survey data is versioned, not presented as live monthly data.

Survey snapshot preserved in this edition. Verified 2026-09-09. Bars are scaled to each chart’s largest value.

Where people work

Employment by sector

Share of total employment—not advertised vacancies or GDP.

2025 · ILO modelled estimates

Rounded shares may not add to exactly 100%. Select a sector label to view its official source.

Read between the numbers

Three takeaways

  1. Youth and the wider labour force

    In 2025, youth unemployment was 9.6%, compared with 5.4% overall. These are different age groups, not counts of job seekers.

    Youth indicator ↗
  2. Participation matters too

    The male–female participation difference was 56.1 percentage points in 2025. People outside the labour force are not counted as unemployed.

    Participation definition ↗
  3. Employment is broader than vacancies

    Sector shares include existing workers and self-employment. A large sector is not, by itself, evidence of a recruitment surge.

    Explore advertised opportunities →

People & participation

Who participates in the workforce?

Labour force participation as a share of each population ages 15+.

2025 · ILO modelled estimates
Women24.0%
Men80.1%
Women source ↗Men source ↗

People & participation

Unemployment by gender

Unemployed people as a share of the respective labour force, ages 15+.

2025 · ILO modelled estimates
Women6.9%
Men5.0%
Women source ↗Men source ↗

Beyond the headline rate

What kinds of work support livelihoods?

Employment status helps put job-market conditions in context. These measures overlap; they must not be added together.

Transparent by design

How to read this Pakistan employment report

National estimates, consistent definitions

The main dashboard uses Pakistan observations from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, sourced from ILO modelled estimates. Labour force participation includes employed people and unemployed people seeking and available for work. Unemployment is not the share of all residents without a job.

Publication month versus data year

A new edition retrieves the latest available official series each month. Annual observations may stay unchanged across several editions. The reporting year is visible beside every metric; retrieval dates describe our snapshot, not when workers were surveyed.

Comparisons without mixing populations

Gender and sector charts use a shared observation year. Youth refers to ages 15–24; the other participation and employment ratios cover ages 15+. Percentage-point gaps are calculated from the cited series. Missing data is never treated as zero.

Survey figures can differ

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics survey results may use different age coverage, definitions and reference periods from the internationally comparable ILO estimates here. Consult the official PBS Labour Force Survey for survey-specific tables. Do not splice the two series into one trend.

This is an independent presentation of official statistics, not an official government publication, real-time vacancy count, hiring forecast, or guarantee of employment.

From insight to action

Make your next application count.

Use the national context alongside the requirements of a specific role.

Build a resume →Estimate take-home pay →Read career guides →

Open evidence

Sources & data provenance

The trend and rate indicators come from the official World Bank API for Pakistan (PAK), WDI source 2, with ILO attribution. Occupation and province charts cite the separate PBS Labour Force Survey tables beside each graph. Provider dataset update: 2026-07-13. Retrieved: . Data licence: CC BY 4.0.

View all 14 official indicators and downloadable source data

The report library

Browse monthly editions

Each edition has a permanent link and preserves the official data retrieved at publication. The archive begins with our first published edition; older annual observations are available in the trend charts, not presented as invented past monthly reports.

Website listings · not national statistics

From Pakistan Jobs Market’s own listings

Current website inventory, including open and expired advertisements—not vacancies or national hiring totals. Monthly counts use each advertisement’s publication date, not the date it was added here.

Updated 01/10/2026, 00:32:22 PKT. Counts are cached briefly; reload to check for updates. These current counts are separate from the archived national report.

Source: website job listings →

Overall · all publication dates

164 listings · 111 government · 53 private · 0 unspecified

0 listings · 0 government · 0 private · 0 unspecified

Website jobs by occupation and province

Website jobs by occupation

Advertisement counts grouped from explicit occupational tags. Unclassified means no recognized occupation tag; government/private and employer names are not occupations. A multi-role advertisement is counted once.

  • Unclassified79
  • Professionals50
  • Managers26
  • Multiple occupation groups8
  • Service and sales workers1

Website jobs by province / territory

One count per advertisement per applicable province. Multi-province listings may appear in several bars, so do not sum them as unique jobs. Nationwide listings are separate, not copied into every province.

  • Pakistan / nationwide98
  • Sindh38
  • Punjab23
  • Khyber Pakhtunkhwa7
  • Balochistan4
  • Gilgit-Baltistan2
  • Islamabad Capital Territory2
  • Azad Jammu and Kashmir1

Source: current website job records. Publication month controls the monthly view. Bars are scaled to the largest category; these are not national employment statistics or vacancy counts.