摘要：Despite some slight improvement in the last two years the overall
employment and labor market situation continues to give rise to serious
concern and needs to be given the highest attention in economic and social
policy making in Pakistan. The rise in unemployment rate from around 3
per cent in the early 1990s to around 8 per cent in recent years in a
country where few people can afford not to work for a lack of any effective
safety net, reflects the emergence of a serious imbalance in the labor
market. This more than doubling of the unemployed from around 1 million
in 1990 to around 3.5 million in 2003-04 has been, as we shall argue, a
major contributory factor in the rise in poverty during the 1990s. The
severity of the employment problem is reflected in the fact that
unemployment in recent years has been higher amongst the poor than the
non-poor in the labor force.
