News Desk
CRETE — The December 2024 sinking of a migrant boat off this Greek island, claiming dozens of Pakistani lives, cast a harsh light on the desperate measures young people take to flee a homeland mired in economic ruin and exploitation. Corruption fuels the tragedy—35 officers from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency were dismissed in February 2025 for colluding with human traffickers—but the networks endure, ensnaring a generation with nowhere else to turn.
In Pakistan, a country teeming with youthful energy—63% of its 230 million people are under 30—a growing number of young adults are neither working nor studying, trapped in a vortex of economic despair, forced migration, and government overreach.
The swelling ranks of economically inactive youth, particularly those aged 15 to 24, signal a crisis that threatens to unravel the nation’s future, driven by a battered economy, human trafficking networks, and an iron-fisted clampdown on digital freedom.
The scale is alarming. The International Labour Organization estimates that over 30% of Pakistani youth are disengaged from both education and employment, a figure worsened by an economy that has lurched from crisis to crisis. Youth unemployment stands at 11.1%, the highest of any demographic, with some 4.5 million Pakistanis jobless overall, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ latest figures. For many, the lack of opportunity is not a choice but a sentence handed down by a system buckling under its own weight.
Pakistan’s economy is a house of cards, propped up by stopgap measures and international handouts. Inflation, which peaked at 38% in 2023, has eased to 11.1% in 2025, per World Bank projections, but remains a relentless burden on households. Foreign reserves, scraping by at $9 billion after a $3 billion I.M.F. bailout in 2023, cover just two months of imports. Growth, forecast at a tepid 2.8% for 2025, cannot keep pace with a population swelling by 1.1 million new workers annually. Austerity measures—higher taxes, slashed subsidies—have squeezed the poor hardest, leaving young people with few prospects and fewer safety nets.
This economic suffocation has fueled a migration exodus, both legal and illicit. Over 860,000 Pakistanis left for work abroad in 2022 alone, a number that has only climbed, with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf as top destinations. But desperation also feeds darker currents.
Human trafficking has surged, with over 3 million ensnared in modern slavery, according to the Global Slavery Index.
The government’s response has been to tighten control, not to liberate opportunity. Under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the omnipresent military, internet censorship has reached new heights. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocks dissent on platforms like X, throttling bandwidth during protests and jailing bloggers who criticize the regime. This digital chokehold stifles the youth’s ability to mobilize or even seek information about jobs abroad, trapping them in a limbo of isolation and ignorance.
These forces—economic collapse, migration traps, and state repression—converge to paralyze Pakistan’s young. With over a third of school-age children out of classrooms and vocational training scarce, the pipeline to productivity is broken.
The government touts initiatives like “Uraan Pakistan,” aiming for 6% growth by 2028, but such promises ring hollow against a backdrop of stagnant wages and soaring debt, now 69% of G.D.P. For the economically inactive, the choice is stark: risk everything to leave, or languish in a country that seems to have forgotten them. As one Karachi student put it, “We’re not a demographic dividend—we’re a demographic disaster.”
