Freelancers in Pakistan earned around 400 million in both FY21 and FY22, accounting for about 15% of the 2. 6 billion ICT exports. Pakistan’s IT exports have been rising in absolute terms and as a share of service exports over the past few years, but it still stands far behind countries like the Philippines and India. Further, it has a long way to go before it rivals the importance of remittances to Pakistan from abroad, which stood at 31. 2 billion in FY22. To learn more about the landscape of freelancing in Pakistan, we scraped the data on Pakistan-based freelancers from two popular sites. Most of the 9, 495 Pakistani freelancers advertising their services on Freelancer. com are based in Punjab and Sindh. The most advertised skills are 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. Firms charge the highest hourly rate on average and have completed the greatest number of jobs. Men charge around 2. 40 more per hour than women and have higher total earnings despite completing fewer transactions. Women have the highest repeat hire rate compared to both men and firms. Earnings and hourly rates are increasing (at a decreasing rate) in terms of freelancers’ experience and percentage of jobs completed on time. Average ratings, however, have no statistically significant impact on either total earnings hourly rates of freelancing work. In contrast, only 1, 100 out of 85, 314 freelancers (1. 3 percent) advertising their services on the site Guru. com, had ever completed a transaction. Men earn more per transaction, but earnings in the last year were roughly equal for men and women.
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