LAHORE: We need wage-led growth, not corporate-led growth. A higher wage is not just a cost, it is demand, purchasing power, economic expansion and, ultimately, stability. Affordability is not only about prices, it is fundamentally about wages.
For years, Pakistan’s public debate on affordability has remained trapped in a narrow lens: prices. Every time inflation spikes, governments rush to subsidise flour or cap the price of sugar; opposition leaders protest petrol rates; experts debate utility bills on television. But almost nobody addresses the real question: why can’t ordinary Pakistanis earn enough to live decently in the first place?
Countries that moved from poverty to prosperity — China, South Korea, Vietnam — did not achieve it by keeping workers poor. They invested in skills, enforced regulations, raised wages, and tied industrial policy to productivity — not exploitation.
The uncomfortable truth is that Pakistan’s working poor have suffered decades of suppressed wages. Even before inflation exploded, millions could not pay for basic nutrition, healthcare, decent schooling, or even a dignified living environment. Workers kept working — but their incomes kept shrinking in real terms. Meanwhile, corporate profits, property prices and elite lifestyles flourished.
Wage suppression came not only from corporate decisions but from policy neglect, weak labour enforcement, growing informal economy, and a political system that protects employers rather than workers. For many industries, the strategy has been obvious: keep labour cheap, keep workers insecure, and keep them without rights — because a frightened worker cannot demand fair pay. This was celebrated as “competitiveness”, but in reality it trapped Pakistan in a low-productivity, low-skill, low-innovation cycle. The working poor were systematically pushed toward malnutrition, debt and social vulnerability.
Pakistan’s official minimum wage ranges around Rs37,000-42,000 per month in 2025 that simply does not buy basic survival in any major city. A family of five in Karachi now requires above Rs90,000 per month for only essential food, rent, and transport. The result is brutal: working families live permanently one illness, one school fee, or one rent increase away from collapse.
Many private employers either refuse to pay the legal minimum or pay only on paper or deduct informally. The state looks the other way. Labour inspectors are understaffed, underpowered, and in some cases, deliberately prevented from intervening. The system protects violators instead of the violated. Real economic dignity requires wages that match living costs — not government handouts that keep people dependent.
Corporate Pakistan constantly demands lower taxes, cheaper energy and relaxed compliance. Yet, when asked to pay living wages, companies argue ‘the business environment cannot support it’. But profitability figures suggest otherwise: automotive assemblers, cement manufacturers, fertiliser companies, and many exporters record strong margins, dividends, and expansions — while the workers who make those profits barely survive.
A society cannot sustain corporate wealth built on working-class poverty. It fuels resentment, insecurity, urban slums, rising crime and chronic malnutrition that eventually weakens even the labour force itself. You cannot build a competitive economy on a hungry workforce.
The planner must enforce the minimum wage with real inspections and penalties; link wage adjustments to actual inflation and cost of living and recognise informal workers and bring them under labour protection. Subsidies should be shifted away from elite producers to working families. It must be understood that we cannot build a future on poverty wages
Workers are the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. They operate factories, construct buildings, transport goods, cook meals, sell services, and keep the country running every single day. Yet, they remain the poorest section of society.
A nation that forces its workforce to survive on less than dignified income is not just unjust — it is economically suicidal. Pakistan must stop treating low wages as normal. The affordability crisis will not be solved by making things slightly cheaper. It will only be resolved when working Pakistanis finally earn enough to live, not just survive.
