Pakistan’s brain drain situation accelerated in 2022 when more than 750,000 educated youth chose to seek employment in foreign countries due to unreliable economic and political situations, coupled with forever shrinking job markets, according to the latest reports.
“The effects of the deteriorating economic situation as well the political uncertainty have begun to affect the workforce of Pakistan,” an official from the Bureau of Emigration told The Express Tribune.
“Hundreds of thousands of young men, including highly educated people, who are worried about inflation, unemployment and uncertain economic and political situation, are going abroad every year in search of employment,” the official added.
Statistics of Pakistani Emigrants
The following data has been shared regarding the total emigrations from Pakistan this year:
- 765,000 people left Pakistan for abroad in 2022
- The number of emigrants this year is nearly triple the 225,000 departures in 2021 and 288,000 emigrants in 2020
- The year 2022’s data of emigrants also included 92,000 highly-educated people such as IT experts, doctors, engineers and accountants.
- 350,000 trained workers and the same number of untrained laborers went abroad
- overwhelming majority of the emigrants, nearly 736,000, went to the Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
- The preferred choice of Pakistanis among the European destinations appeared to be Romania
- 2,000 Pakistanis went to Iraq, 5,000 to Malaysia, 602 to China, 815 to Japan, and 136 to Turkey. The documents also revealed that 478 Pakistan went to Sudan in Africa in search of employment.
According to the official data, more than half of the Pakistani emigrants, such as 424,000, were from Punjab, 206,000 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa plus 38,000 from newly-merged tribal districts, 54,000 from Sindh, 7,000 from Balochistan, 27,000 from Azad Kashmir and 6,000 from Islamabad.