The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has released the first Digital Economic Census 2023. The census records a workforce of 25.4 million and shows that Services Sector Jobs employ 11.3 million people or 45 percent of the total.
The Production sector employs 5.6 million people or 22 percent. The Social sector employs 7.6 million people, or 30 percent. These figures make clear that services, not factories, are the main source of formal employment in Pakistan.
The census counted 7.2 million economic establishments. Most are small. About 7.1 million businesses have between 1 to 50 employees. The number of establishments with more than 250 workers is only 7,086. The number of factories is 23,000, and mosques is 600,403, and this is a contrast between the center of action and built form.
Punjab still has the highest number of employees, 13.6 million of the workforce. In Sindh, there are 5.7 million, and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 4 million. The information is geo-coded, including 2.7 million trade shops, 696,558 industrial, 242,616 schools, and 119,789 hospitals. This geographic information allows planners to focus skills training and investment where they already have a labour supply.
The new census removes long-standing guesswork about where jobs exist and where gaps remain. Local governments can use geo-tagged maps to improve transport and utilities for dense service clusters. Training institutes can align courses with retail, health, and education needs shown by the census.