KARACHI:
Annie earned a psychology degree in 2025, did the internship, took the courses, built the CV exactly as advised. Yet she’s still stuck between applications, since jobs in her field often demand qualifications beyond a bachelor’s degree or pay too little to live on in Karachi. Remote work, she found out, paid even less. Annie’s story is not unusual. For two decades, families across Pakistan believed that stretching the household budget to get a degree would offer stability.
The Higher Education Commission says Pakistani universities produced roughly 445,000 graduates a year between 2020 and 2024, over 2.2 million in five years. According to the Pakistan Labour Force Survey 2024–25, youth unemployment among those aged 15 to 24 stands near 12.5%, rising above 13 percent for young women in urban areas. Around 55 percent of Pakistani women aged 15–29 are NEET: neither employed, neither in education, nor in training. Not only that, but graduate unemployment is above 16 percent, with postgraduate degree-holders faring no better.
Humaira, a final-year journalism student, has watched a junior reporting post go to an applicant with an MPhil. Moreover, for women, commute safety, family expectations and workplace culture all factor into whether an opportunity is worth pursuing
Saim, who studied digital media marketing and built a freelance portfolio alongside his degree, took a call centre job instead. As the eldest son, staying unemployed wasn’t an option.
Employers see a different side of the same problem. Kashaf Akram, an HR manager, says expectations have shifted across every sector, noting that that digital fluency, communication and English proficiency now weigh as heavily as academic transcripts, sometimes more so for graduates from public institutions. She appreciates, however, that this generation is vocal about what they want and what they need.
Provincial governments have responded with internship and training programmes, in Punjab and Sindh among others, but the scale of these efforts has not caught up with the scale of the problem. Educational development is a modest ask. Pakistan succeeded in sending an entire generation to university. The unfinished task is building an economy that knows what to do with them once they arrive.
Aradhiya Khan
Karachi
