Unemployment. Berozgari. It is an economic indicator that has brought down governments and is constantly a bone of contention. At the very core of it the entire concept is very simple. People need livelihoods and in an economy where the services industry is the only path for anyone with no capital backing them – jobs are crucial.Â
That said, there is very little understanding among people regarding what the ‘employment rate’ that is often at the center of economic debates is, how it is calculated, and what it stands for. Any A level economics textbook will tell you that the unemployment rate is the percentage of unemployed persons in the labour force which includes only those individuals who are eligible and available for employment.Â
That makes sense. There is a certain section of the population that wants to be employed to qualify for employment and some of those people do not have jobs. But calculating the unemployment rate is a little more complicated than this.Â
A matter of definitionsÂ
To get a clearer picture, we need to understand how unemployed persons as well as the labour force are defined. Each country may have slightly-but-impactfully varying definitions for these terms. In our case how these terms are defined and consequently how the unemployment rate is calculated, is decided by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
A number of labour market indicators like the unemployment, underemployment, labour force participation rates, and others are derived from data collected through the Labor Force Survey (LFS). The survey is supposed to be conducted by PBS yearly. However, the latest publicly available results are from the 2018 – 2019 LFS, which were published in September 2021. The content in this publication is expensive to produce. But unlike other journalistic outfits, business publications have to cover the very organizations that directly give them advertisements. Hence, this large source of revenue, which is the lifeblood of other media houses, is severely compromised on account of Profit’s no-compromise policy when it comes to our reporting. No wonder, Profit has lost multiple ad deals, worth tens of millions of rupees, due to stories that held big businesses to account. Hence, for our work to continue unfettered, it must be supported by discerning readers who know the value of quality business journalism, not just for the economy but for the society as a whole.To read the full article, subscribe and support independent business journalism in Pakistan
