An overview of some key characteristics of the employed work force aged 10 years and above in the 75 flood-affected districts, in comparison to the non-affected districts across each of the four provinces, using district-level data from the Labour Force Survey 2020-21. The analysis indicates that the total employment in the country stood at 67.2 million in 2020-21, out of which the employment level in the 75 flood affected districts amounted to 21.8 million (32.5%), while remaining 45.4 million (67.5 %) were residing in non-flood affected districts.

The gender breakup of baseline employment in the flood affected districts shows that the major share of the employed were males at 17.5 million (80%) compared to females at 4.4 million (20%). The provincial distribution of employment in these districts shows that the highest share of employed were in Sindh at 50.6% (11 million), followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 25% (5.5 million), Balochistan at 14% (3.1 million) and lastly Punjab at 10.4%. The employment in the flood affected districts was mainly concentrated in the rural areas at 16.3 million, representing nearly 75% of all employment in these districts, while 25% were working in the urban areas of these districts.

The analysis of employment by age groups indicates that the highest proportion of the employed in these districts was in the youth age bracket (15-29 years) at 8.8 million (40.4%), followed by those in the age group of 30-44 years at 7.5 million (34.5%) and the employed in age groups of 45-60 years – 4.3 million (19.8%). Around 0.5 million children in the age group 10-14 years were also engaged in economic activities in these 75 districts.

In terms of employment status, a large number of the employed in these districts were in vulnerable forms of employment, including self-employed in the non-agriculture and agriculture sectors (3.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively), contributing family workers in agriculture (4.1 million) and the casual paid employees (3.5 million), while another 1.95 million were engaged in farming activities. On the other hand, 4.7 million of the employed in these districts were working in somewhat more secure form of employment, i.e. as regular paid employees.