The Global Gig Economy: Pakistan’s Opportunity to Become a Leader in Service Exports?

Freelancers in Pakistan earned around $400 million in both FY21 and FY22, accounting for about 15% of the $2.6 Billion in ICT exports. To learn more about the landscape of freelancing in Pakistan, we scraped the data on Pakistan-based freelancers from the sites Guru.com and Freelancer.com. The most commonly advertised skill on freelancing is in programming, web and app development, followed by design, research/ writing, photography, and marketing. Nearly three-quarters of the workers listed have earned money through the site. Men charge around $2.40 more per hour than women and have larger total earnings, even though they have completed fewer transactions. Women have the highest repeat hire rate as compared to both men and firms. Performance outcomes are almost indistinguishable along the dimensions of average rating, percentage of jobs completed, jobs completed on time, and jobs completed on budget. Out of 85,314 freelancers advertising their services on the site Guru.com, only 1,100 (1.3 percent) had ever completed a transaction. The majority of freelancers are based in Punjab, Sindh, and Islamabad, but there are also a handful of extremely active workers in the Northern Areas and AJK. More than two-thirds with profiles on the site are men and women make up another 15 percent; the remaining are either firms or unknown gender. The majority of services offered are photography and graphic design, but annual earnings are highest in search engine optimization, e-commerce, and customer services. Men make more per transaction but earnings in the last year were roughly equal for men and women.