Pakistan is trying to transform itself from a middle-income to a high-income country through a human capital development strategy entitled "Skilling Pakistan". The country faces some issues: (i) low perception and low quality of training education, students do not consider training as a viable and mainstream alternative, and enter the labour market with low skills; (ii) industries' general perception of the quality of technical/skills education is low and a shortage of skilled labour is listed as one of the major constraints for investment; and (iii) employees' low expectations of the prospects of technical/skills education courses and hence their low take-ups.
The report says that the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have particularly high youth unemployment, despite the region's economic growth surge last decade. In these countries, overseas employment is an important option for youth. Youth unemployment rate in Pakistan is eight percent of total youth population, in India it is 11 percent, while in Bangladesh it is nine percent.
The ADB report shows that the governments of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Tajikistan are in the process of developing comprehensive skills strategies. Pakistan has planned to add technical streams in secondary education and has aimed for half of all secondary students to enter those streams. Pakistan's National Skill Strategy (2008-2013) has set four goals: Streamlining policy making; enhancing the role of the private sector in policy making; designing and setting standards in training; and improving apprenticeship training systems and provide more flexibility in industries' selection of trainees and the structure of the training.
The demand for skills training is derived from the need to align skills supply with demand. The change in shares of occupation shows the direction and the magnitude of the shifts in skills demand. Nepal and Vietnam have growing demands for trade and production workers. In Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and Nepal, demands for production workers have increased. On the other hand, demands for agricultural workers and elementary occupations have declined.
Geographic mismatch is another serious problem plaguing the labour market in South Asia although this has a more serious impact in larger countries such as India and Pakistan. The countries with the highest percentage of the labour force with only a primary education include Indonesia and Pakistan; these countries have a significantly high percentage of labour force with either less than one year or only pre-primary education.
Not much attention has been devoted to the development of knowledge workers in Asia. The higher-skilled occupations such as professionals, technicians, associate professionals and clerks are significantly advanced in the developed countries of Australia, Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, and Singapore while Cambodia, Pakistan and Vietnam are struggling to supply these types of skills. Several countries in the region are in a state of low-skill equilibrium, particularly in Cambodia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam. These countries are faced with skills development demands for upskilling.