Pakistan leaves 1.2 million young people without work every year

A young country with stalled careers

Muzamil opens with a number. About 60% of Pakistanis are under 30, which people often call the country’s biggest asset. Yet unemployment among the young is at a peak. Over four years of his podcast, he says, he has spoken with more than 400 industry and business leaders and asked why young Pakistanis struggle so much to find jobs and grow careers.

He sets one boundary at the start. This episode is not about politics or things outside your control. It is about what you can change yourself, and change quickly.

Schooling that does not prepare you

The first reason is weak education, and not only in rural areas. Even city schools run on rote learning, often taught by people who could not find industry jobs. Muzamil cites a Pakistan Software Association study. About 50,000 students graduate in computer science each year, he says, and only about 20%, or 10,000, can be placed in jobs on some level. Good education, in his view, reaches roughly the top 1%: the O and A level students who go on to a dozen top universities. Problem solving, digital literacy and creative thinking are missing elsewhere, and he has seen industries with open jobs all year that no one can fill.

His answer is the internet. About 130 million Pakistanis are online, he says. Keep your formal studies going, but use YouTube when a teacher cannot explain a topic, and take free courses on Coursera. Take them to build skill. “Once your skill building is done,” he says, “earning money will be very easy.”

Not enough jobs at home

The second reason is simple arithmetic. In Muzamil’s figures, about 3 million young Pakistanis reach working age each year. The most jobs the country has ever created in a year is about 1.6 to 1.8 million. That leaves about 1.2 million without work every year, and many of the jobs that exist do not match graduates’ skills.

He compares it to looking for work inside your own house: you can mop the floor all day, but it earns your family nothing. You have to look outside. Jobs exist across the world online, and with good communication and a real skill you can do them for half the price of the people doing them now. IT services, he adds, do not need a degree. He warns against anyone promising to make you an engineer in three months. But the knowledge in a four-year degree, with its breaks and irrelevant content, can in his view be learned in 12 to 18 months of steady online study.

Parents and the old career map

The third reason is outdated thinking at home. Families push children towards medicine, mechanical or electrical engineering, or a secure government job with a pension. Muzamil believes that era is over. Government salaries are low and the state is short of money. Meanwhile doctors are being produced like photocopies and many are jobless. Forcing a child into a field they have no interest in, he argues, kills their happiness and their growth. He remembers his own parents saying he just sat in bed with a laptop and that this was not a real job.

His advice is to talk to parents with patience and respect. They want the best for you, and they decide from what they have seen. Show them podcasts and success stories from the field you want. Explain the path: what graduates do, what they earn, where it can lead. “If you go with a plan,” he says, they will listen.

Devices, internet and money

The fourth reason is access. The internet goes down often, even in big cities. Good devices are expensive and taxed. Many young people cannot pay for courses. Muzamil acknowledges these problems are real and outside a student’s control.

Still, he argues, lack of money does not block learning. If you cannot afford a 500-rupee course, search the skill on YouTube and start with the most viewed basics. Then move to Coursera, where courses from universities such as Harvard and MIT are offered. If those feel too hard, Khan Academy covers school-level foundations for free. And the more Pakistanis earn dollars through skills, he says, the more laptops and phones the country can afford to import.

Mentors two steps ahead

The last reason, and to Muzamil the most important, is the lack of guidance. Passionate young people get advice from a cousin or a father’s friend who saw a video about a poultry business. Many slip into a defeatist view that success needs connections. Muzamil disagrees. He knows people from second and third tier universities now working at major US tech companies. Many of his FAST classmates came on scholarships from Pakistan’s poorest areas, and today they are more successful than he is, working from Portugal, the UK and elsewhere.

His method is practical. Do not message famous people ten times ahead of you. Find people two steps ahead who lived a life like yours. Go to events such as those at the National Incubation Center or Connected Pakistan, and use LinkedIn. Ask honestly for 10 to 15 minutes of guidance, not money or a job. He says he gets 100 to 150 messages a day, and most ask him for work or money. “Money will come when you know exactly what you do, why you do it, how you do it and what your value proposition is,” he says. Take direction first, because the wrong direction can leave you earning the same small amount ten years from now.

Human capital that needs shaping

Muzamil ends with his own plan. After 14 years of making content, he took a short break and decided the most valuable thing he could offer was guidance: translating what he has learned from leaders into short, free, regular videos with clear next steps.

He rejects the line that Pakistan’s youth is simply talented. “Pakistan has a lot of human capital, but it needs to be shaped into talent,” he says. The failure, in his view, is not the young person’s. “We are the fools who did not build the tools, structures and systems” to turn them into talent the world will pay for. The solutions exist, he says. Keep learning, stay adaptable, and do not give up on what you love.