Designing an Employment Strategy The fastest expansion in enrollment has been in universities at 7.5 percent per annum. It is not surprising that workers with degree or post-graduate qualifications have had difficulty in finding jobs in a labor market where the growth in employment annually is 2.5 percent. Table 27.11: Growth in Enrollment at Different Levels of Education(Million) 2007-08 2017-18 Annual Growth Rate(%) Primary Stage 18.360 22.931 2.2 Middle Stage 5.427 7.362 3.0 High Stage 2.434 3.861 4.6 Technical and Vocational 0.256 0.433 5.2 College 1.344 2.292 5.3 Universities 0.741 1.575 7.5 Source: PES The number of universities has increased from 124 in 2007-08 to 211 in 2018-19. A comparison can be made with Bangladesh. It has 40 percent fewer universities with 22 percent less population. India has four and half times the number of universities with over six times the population. The time has come to impose a moratorium on new public universities. The priority must shift in a decisive way towards secondary education. At the stage of development that Pakistan is in, the demand is increasing more for workers with middle level of skills. Also, the coverage of technical and vocational institutions is limited, and it should be greatly expanded. As an incentive a worker with a diploma from such institutions should get preferential access to credit. Focus on the demand side for workers with higher educational qualifications will require adequate expansion in the large-scale manufacturing sector, banking, and professional private services. With the revolution in information technology more opportunities will emerge for trained graduates as digitalization of the economy proceeds further and more expansion takes place in the export of IT services. Absorbing the‘Youth Bulge’ One other important dimension of the employment strategy is productive absorption of the‘youth bulge’. Estimates are that in 2019-20 prior to COVID-19 there were 5 million ‘idle’ male youth and 7 million female‘idle’ youth, who were either unemployed or not engaged in acquiring further education. Especially in the case of idle male youth there is the risk of move towards crime or fundamentalism. As such, the employment strategy will need to ensure that there are special programs for absorption of youth into economic activities. 289