Number of jobless rises to three million

Unemployment stands at 5.6% in 2009-10 against 5.5% in previous year.

ISLAMABAD: The number of unemployed people in the country has increased to around three million with the addition of 75,000 people during the year 2009-10, reveals an official survey.

Pakistan Labour Force Survey 2009-10, released here on Thursday, shows that unemployment in the country rose to 5.6 per cent of the total workforce. The ratio was 5.5 per cent in the last survey of 2008-09, shows the survey of Federal Bureau of Statistics. With that, the total number of unemployed citizens rose to 3.05 million against 2.93 million in the preceding year.

The agriculture sector absorbed the largest segment of the workforce by giving jobs to 45 per cent people. Though the services sector was the second major area but it shed 0.4 per cent jobs that shifted to the industrial sector. The industry absorbed 20.9 per cent of the employed population against earlier figure of 20.4 per cent.

The total workforce in the country is 54.9 million, out of which 51.9 million were employed. There were 42.5 million male employees and 12.5 million female employees. However, over two-third of female workforce were unpaid family workers.

Employees constitute the largest working group with 35.2 per cent of employed people.

Over one-third of the working people were doing their own businesses while 29 per cent (almost 17 million) were not directly working but aligned to family businesses without getting salaries or even compensation in kind, which were categorised as unpaid family workers.

The fractional increase in unemployment was due to increase in female unemployment rate that rose to 9.5 per cent of the total workforce. Unemployment increased in both urban and rural areas.

In Punjab and Sindh, the number of jobless people increased further. Contrary to that, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa unemployment marginally fell and in Balochistan it remained stagnant.

In terms of age group-wise unemployment, the jobless ratio for the first age group, comprising young people aged between 10 and 14 years, increased to 10.8 per cent from 9.3 per cent. Interestingly, for the last age group of 60 and above, unemployment dropped from 2008-09 level of 12.7 per cent to 10.6 per cent.

As much as 28.8 per cent of the workforce worked 56 hours and above in a week, reports the FBS. Near eight in 10 people worked more than 35 hours a week.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2011.