Youth Unemployment In Pakistan

Youth unemployment is a concern of almost every country of the world and it has gained more attentions of the policy makers in the last few decades. Bulks of the countries have strived to control the youth unemployment in the recent past. Youth unemployment rates in Pakistan were considerably high at the start of this century. Due to increase in birth rates and decline in the infant mortality in the 1990’s population of Pakistan increased many folds. As a result large numbers of youngsters have entered into the labor force due to which youth unemployment rates remained higher. In 2001 youth unemployment rate was at its peak and reached at 13.6 percent afterwards it has steadily decreased. In 2013 youth unemployment rate in Pakistan was recorded

The most significant reason of youth unemployment is the lack of skills of the young workers. Very frequently it is observed that mismatch exist between the jobs offered by the employers and the skills of the workers. The curriculum and teaching methods at educational institutes are inefficient and do not have the capacity of skill development among youngsters. Furthermore there is deficiency of technical training institutes for the professional training. Most of the jobs at private and public sector require highly experienced applicants that they do not posses. Constantly increasing population can also be taken as a potential reason for the high youth unemployment. Low wages in the labor market is also one of the causes of the youth unemployment. Many young people reject jobs that are offered to them at low wages. Youth unemployment in few recent years has been increased because of the low foreign and domestic investment. Due to the security risks people are hesitant in investing businesses that also have caused an increase in the unemployment. Some of the young people can be without jobs due to the frictional unemployment. The theories of unemployment put forward this idea that some school leavers are expected to remain unemployed for the sake of finding suitable jobs. Youth unemployment can also be an outcome of the business cycle. Commonly during the recession period firms tend to lay off their less experienced

Unemployment particularly amongst the youth can be described as the mother of all social evils, because in many cases it is a source of crimes, homelessness, frustration, loss of confidence, drug addiction and family tension (Qayyum,2007). Apart from these social troubles youth unemployment also has certain negative impacts on the economy. It is an obvious observation that the consumption expenditures for the young people are much higher than the old people. In more technical words it can be said that marginal propensity to consume for the youth is relatively large than the old ones .So a larger proportion of young unemployed persons having zero earnings adversely affect the aggregate consumption in the economy. When the aggregate consumption falls the investment incentives for the investors also gets reduced. So as a result the national income or the Gross domestic products gets squeezed. We do possess an overloaded supply of human capital, but the quality of this factor of production is quite low that instead of getting benefits from it we are getting worse off. Moreover when a large percentage of youth remain unemployed it represents a situation of inefficient use of this