Unemployment rose from 6.3% to 7.1%.
Source
Pakistan Economic Survey — https://finance.gov.pk/survey/chapter_26/Complete_PES2025_26.pdf. Verified in source set / retroactive normalization pending.
What it proves
Demographic dividend requires labour demand, not merely young workers.
What it does not prove: Measured unemployment requires active job search, so anyone who has stopped looking or is scraping a living in informal work is recorded as employed, not unemployed — which is why a 7.1% rate coexists with a decade of distress. The 0.8 percentage-point rise is also small relative to what it sits on top of: nearly ten million jobs were added over the same four years.
Memory hook: 7.1% → the jobless rate rose even as ten million jobs appeared
Rebuts the claim: "At 7.1% unemployment Pakistan's labour market is sound by regional standards" — the low rate reflects informal survival work counted as employment, not absorption.