t 8am everyday, Bilal, a 24-year-old with a BBA diploma framed on his wall, fastens his helmet and logs into a delivery app. He spends the next ten hours threading through Peshwar’s traffic, carrying meals that disappear in minutes. His own future feels stalled. “I thought my degree would open doors,” he says. “Instead, I have been opening app after app.”

Bilal’s experience is no longer an oddity. It is becoming the lived reality for a growing segment of Pakistan’s educated youth population — people who take on survival jobs, work that keeps the lights on but does little for a young person’s career or dignity.

The data show that the domestic labour market is fraying at the edges. The Labour Force Survey and recent labour diagnostics point to stubborn youth unemployment and rising underemployment among university graduates, a pattern that is pushing many degree-holders into informal, gig, or low-skill service work.

How big is the problem? Different measures show different slices, but the picture is consistently worrying. Pakistan’s official labour reports suggest that youth unemployment and underemployment remain significant challenges. Think-tank research has found that roughly one in three recent graduates are either unemployed or working below their skill level.

In short, an awful lot of people with degrees are doing jobs that don’t require one. That gap between credentials and jobs is the engine of the survival-jobs trend.

The gig economy has become both a refuge and a trap. Platforms for food delivery, ride-hailing and online freelancing have created quick income streams. Fairwork and local platform studies estimate hundreds of thousands of workers in location-based platform jobs in Pakistan. Major apps report fleet strengths that run into tens of thousands.

Foodpanda’s operations, for example, have involved thousands of riders across dozens of cities. Platform studies suggest significant and rising participation in app-based work. These numbers show that when formal jobs are scarce, young people rush to whatever pays in the sort term.

Call centres and the broader BPO (business process outsourcing) sector are another visible gateway to survival work. The government and industry reports point to rapid expansion of BPO services — export earnings and employment in the sector have grown as firms chase foreign contracts that can be serviced from Pakistan.

Call centres offer steady night-shift work and training, but the bulk of workers remain in entry-level tasks that seldom translate into long-term career ladders. In other words, these jobs buy time, not futures.

Why are so many university graduates forced into these roles? The causes are layered and, sadly, familiar.

First, economic growth and formal sector hiring have been weak. Firms, cautious about expansion, hire less. When they do, they prize experience. Second, our higher education system still produces credentials more than work-ready skills: curricula, pedagogy and campus-industry links lag behind market needs. Third, inflation and family obligations often make a survival wage, however humble, an urgent priority.

Brain drain, combined with widespread underemployment, erodes the social contract around education. As degrees stop guaranteeing progressive careers, people begin to question the value of the long and costly path. 

Put together, the market sends a blunt message: if you need money today, take what’s available. If you plan for a career, be prepared to wait. The wait often means thinning savings and rising stress.

The human costs are both immediate and slow-burn. Financially, survival jobs pay the bills but rarely allow savings, investments, or the little luxuries that once marked middle-class life.

Socially, they reshuffle status and dignity. Families that expected professional careers for their children learn to accept motorbikes and night shifts as normal.

Psychologically, the toll is heavy: young people report anxiety, shame and fractured aspirations. A study of the phenomenon found that lost talent and underused graduate potential carry measurable economic costs, as educated workers in low-skill roles mean wasted human capital for the nation.

There are also quieter, structural consequences. When a generation treats domestic jobs as stopgaps while preparing to migrate, the country loses trained talent in the long run. PIDE’s recent work warns of an exodus and calculates substantial costs from high-skill emigration and wasted graduate potential.

This brain drain, combined with widespread underemployment, erodes the social contract around education: if degrees stop guaranteeing progress, people begin to question the value of the long and costly path they took.

So what does a careful and meaningful response look like?

First, we must stop treating survival jobs as individual choices. They are labour market signals that demand policy responses. Universities should be held to account for employability outcomes: curricula need urgent reform toward practical, industry-linked skills, internships and apprenticeships. The state should expand vocational training and craft clear pathways from short-term work to sustainable careers.

Second, the gig economy must be regulated in ways that protect workers without killing flexible income streams. Studies of platform workers in Pakistan show that better protections and clearer rules do not destroy platform jobs; they make them less precarious and more productive.

Third, we need better measurement and public reporting. Labour surveys must routinely publish graduate-level employment outcomes, sectoral absorptions and underemployment indicators. When policymakers, educators and employers can see the gap in plain numbers, they can target interventions more surgically. A data-literate approach helps prevent the knee-jerk solutions that paper over symptoms without curing the disease.

Finally, the conversation must respect dignity. Public rhetoric that mocks gig work or blames young people for “wrong choices” misses the point. A rider who studies in the morning and delivers at night to keep the family afloat deserves both respect and a ladder to climb.

Every night as Bilal closes his delivery app and counts the day’s earnings, he also scrolls job portals he has applied to for months. His is the story of a generation that will not settle for crumbs but, for now, takes what keeps hunger at bay. The rise of survival jobs among educated youth is a red flag for Pakistan’s economy and society: it says we are producing graduates faster than we can create meaningful work. We must urgently rebuild bridges between education and employment.

The writer is a freelance contributor