By 2018 about three-quarters of households earned some non-agricultural labour income.
Source
World Bank — https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2025/10/17/fragile-gains-enduring-challenges-charting-pakistan-s-path-out-of-poverty. Verified in source set / retroactive normalization pending.
What it proves
Structural transformation contributed to poverty reduction.
What it does not prove: The unit is the household and the threshold is "some" income, so a single member driving a rickshaw counts the whole household as non-agricultural; it says nothing about what share of household earnings that is, or whether the work is steady. It is also a 2018 snapshot, taken before the post-2020 shocks reshaped labour markets.
Memory hook: Three-quarters → most households already have one foot off the farm
Rebuts the claim: "Pakistan remains an essentially agrarian society where households live off the land" — by 2018 most households already drew some income from outside agriculture.