For years, Pakistan has told its young people that education is the road to a better life.
Study hard. Get a degree. Build a career. Contribute to the country.
But for a growing number of young professionals, another question comes after graduation: What if the better future is somewhere else?
That question is being asked by engineers, doctors, IT professionals and thousands of other young Pakistanis who are looking beyond the country’s borders for better salaries, professional opportunities and a more secure life.
Zeeshan Ahmad, an IT engineer, is one of them.
Speaking to me by phone, Ahmad described the difference he sees between the opportunities available to IT professionals in Pakistan and those offered in Europe. Salaries, he said, are much higher in European countries, while employees also receive better benefits and facilities.
For someone who has spent years acquiring technical skills, the comparison is difficult to ignore.
A young professional may have a job in Pakistan and still feel that his career is not moving forward. The salary may cover the basics, but not provide the kind of financial security that makes it possible to save, buy a home, support a family or plan confidently for the future.
For Ahmad, the attraction of Europe is therefore about more than a bigger paycheque. It is about what that paycheque can mean for his life.
His story is not unusual.
Dr. Shazia, a young BDS doctor, sees her professional future in much the same way, although her destination and profession are different. In a phone conversation with me, she said she believes her future would be much brighter if she moved to Canada, where she sees stronger demand for dentists and other healthcare professionals.
Her calculation is straightforward: she has invested years in education and professional training, and she wants to take those skills somewhere they can provide greater opportunities.
For young professionals like Ahmad and Dr. Shazia, migration is not necessarily a rejection of Pakistan.
It is a search for recognition, opportunity and economic security.
And that is what makes the country’s growing migration trend more significant than a simple story about people leaving.
Pakistan is losing—or exporting—young workers at a time when it needs them to build its economy.
During 2025, 762,499 Pakistani workers registered for overseas employment, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26. More than 530,000 were registered for employment in Saudi Arabia alone.
Those figures are large enough to tell a national story, but they can also hide the individual stories behind them.
Every number represents somebody who filled out a form, obtained a passport or visa, said goodbye to a family, boarded a plane or began preparing to do so.
There is usually a family behind that decision.
There may be parents who have spent years paying for their son’s or daughter’s education. There may be younger siblings whose education depends on the income of an older brother abroad. There may be a family home that needs to be built or a loan that needs to be repaid.
Migration is therefore not simply an individual’s decision.
It can become a family’s economic strategy.
Pakistan’s labour market helps explain why.
The Labour Force Survey 2024-25 estimates the country’s labour force at more than 83 million, with unemployment at 7.1 per cent. The average monthly wage is around Rs39,000.
But these numbers do not fully describe what it means to be a young Pakistani looking for work.
A graduate can technically be employed and still be dissatisfied with the job. An engineer can work in an occupation unrelated to engineering. A young person can have a job but earn so little that there is little possibility of saving or improving his family’s standard of living.
This is the difference between having employment and having a career.
For many young Pakistanis, the problem is not simply finding something to do.
It is finding work that matches their education, skills and ambitions.
That distinction is particularly important for professionals such as IT engineers and healthcare workers.
The global economy is creating demand for skills that Pakistan’s young people increasingly possess. Technology companies need software engineers and IT specialists. Healthcare systems in several developed countries face shortages in particular professions. Construction, engineering, hospitality and technical trades also provide opportunities overseas.
The result is a difficult irony.
Pakistan spends years educating its young people, but other countries can end up benefiting from that investment.
A young doctor who qualifies in Pakistan may eventually work in Canada. An engineer trained in Pakistan may build his career in Europe. A skilled technician may find better-paid work in the Gulf.
The country that educated them may receive little of their professional contribution, while another economy receives the benefit of their skills.
Yet the story is not entirely negative.
The money these workers send home matters enormously.
Pakistan relies heavily on remittances from overseas workers. Those funds help families pay for food, education, healthcare and housing. They also provide Pakistan with a crucial source of foreign exchange.
For a family receiving money from a son in Saudi Arabia or a daughter working in Europe, migration can change the family’s economic position dramatically.
A remittance can pay a school fee.
It can cover a medical bill.
It can help a family build a house.
It can finance a small business.
It can also provide something harder to measure: a sense that the sacrifices made to send a young person abroad were worthwhile.
But there is another side.
The person sending that money is not at home.
Parents wait for phone calls. Children grow up with one parent away. Brothers and sisters see each other through screens. Family celebrations are sometimes marked by an empty chair.
The economic gain can therefore come with a social cost.
For Pakistan, the larger danger is becoming too comfortable with this arrangement.
If young people cannot find attractive employment at home, they leave. They send money back. The money helps the economy. The state benefits from foreign exchange. And the pressure to create better jobs domestically can become less urgent.
That would be a dangerous cycle.
Remittances are valuable, but they cannot replace a productive domestic economy.
Pakistan needs young people not only as earners abroad but as engineers in its factories, doctors in its hospitals, software developers in its technology companies, entrepreneurs in its cities and skilled workers in its industries.
The country needs their ideas as much as it needs their remittances.
There is also a danger in looking at migration only through the language of “brain drain.”
Not every Pakistani who leaves is lost to Pakistan forever.
People who work abroad can acquire new skills, establish international networks, save capital and eventually invest in Pakistan. Professionals living overseas can create businesses, transfer knowledge and contribute to their communities.
Migration can therefore be part of development.
But it becomes a problem when young people feel that leaving is the only realistic way to achieve a decent life.
That is where the experiences of Ahmad and Dr. Shazia become important.
An IT engineer comparing his salary and benefits with those available in Europe is making an economic calculation.
A young BDS doctor looking towards Canada because she believes there is greater demand for her profession is making another.
Neither decision is difficult to understand.
The difficult question is what those decisions say about Pakistan.
For decades, the country has spoken about its youth as its greatest asset. Politicians routinely describe the young population as a demographic dividend.
But young people cannot become a dividend simply because they are young.
They need jobs.
They need decent wages.
They need opportunities to use their education.
They need workplaces where skills are rewarded and careers can grow.
And they need some confidence that staying in Pakistan will not mean permanently compromising their ambitions.
That requires more than government employment schemes or short-term training programmes.
Pakistan needs an economy capable of creating productive private-sector jobs. Universities need stronger links with employers. Technical training needs to be connected to actual market demand. Businesses need an environment in which they can invest and expand. And young people need access to finance and opportunities if they want to start businesses of their own.
At the same time, Pakistan should prepare its workers properly for international markets.
If Canada needs healthcare professionals, if Europe needs technology workers and if Gulf economies need skilled technicians, Pakistan should ensure that its young people have the qualifications, language skills and professional certifications required to compete.
But the objective should not be simply to produce better workers for other countries.
It should be to produce a generation capable of succeeding wherever it chooses to work.
That distinction is important.
A Pakistani who goes abroad because he wants international experience is making a choice.
A Pakistani who goes abroad because he cannot see any future at home is responding to a problem.
The two may look identical in migration statistics.
They are not the same economically.
The growing number of young Pakistanis seeking opportunities abroad should therefore be read as more than a migration story. It is also a story about wages, inflation, employment, education and expectations.
It is a story about what happens when the aspirations of a young population grow faster than the opportunities available to them.
Perhaps that is why the most important question is not how many Pakistanis are leaving.
The more important question is what is pushing them towards the departure gate.
Zeeshan Ahmad sees higher salaries and better employment benefits in Europe.
Dr. Shazia sees professional demand and a brighter future in Canada.
Their choices may ultimately benefit their families and, through remittances, Pakistan’s economy.
But they also leave behind a question that policymakers cannot answer with migration statistics alone.
What would Pakistan have to change so that a young engineer or doctor could look at the world and still believe that the best place to build a future is here?
Until that question is seriously addressed, Pakistan’s airports will continue to tell a story that economic statistics sometimes fail to capture.
A generation is not simply leaving the country.
It is searching for a future.