ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has developed a long-term human resource deployment plan to send 1 million workers to Saudi Arabia by 2030 under a labor mobility strategy aligned with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic transformation agenda, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26.
Saudi Arabia has long been the largest destination for Pakistani workers, whose remittances are a critical source of foreign exchange for the South Asian country. Since 1972, more than 15 million Pakistanis have gone abroad for employment through official procedures, with more than 96 percent of registered workers heading to Gulf Cooperation Council countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the survey.
The latest plan comes as Saudi Arabia expands investment in construction, infrastructure, tourism, aviation, logistics, health care and technology under Vision 2030, creating demand for foreign labor across both skilled and semi-skilled categories. Pakistan, which has a large youth population and rising labor force, is seeking to move from traditional low-skilled migration toward higher-skilled, higher-remittance employment.
“Pakistan’s engagement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been institutionalized under the Saudi-Pakistan Economic Cooperation Framework (SPECF) as a strategic platform aligning labor mobility, human capital development, and economic cooperation with Vision 2030,” the survey said.
“Under SPECF, a Human Resource Deployment Plan (2025–2039) has been developed and shared with the Saudi side, targeting 1 million Pakistanis initially by 2030 and then 1.51 million annual overseas deployments by 2039, supported by a structured pipeline of skilled, semi-skilled, and highly qualified workers in the sectors (such as construction, hospitality & tourism, health care, IT, logistics, aviation, and infrastructure), ensuring alignment with Saudi demand under its diversification agenda.”
The survey said Saudi Arabia remained Pakistan’s top overseas labor market in 2025, receiving 530,256 of the 762,499 Pakistani workers registered for employment abroad during the year, or 69.54 percent of the total. Qatar followed with 68,376 workers, while the UAE received 52,664.
Saudi Arabia’s dominance was “primarily driven by the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 agenda, which has significantly expanded opportunities in infrastructure development, construction, and services,” the document said.
The UAE, by contrast, saw Pakistani worker inflows fall from 64,130 in 2024 to 52,664 in 2025, which the survey attributed to post-pandemic visa rationalization, tighter regulations and changing labor market preferences. Oman also recorded a decline due to Omanization policies aimed at increasing employment of its own nationals.
The survey said Pakistan’s workforce strategy for Saudi Arabia was anchored in the Kingdom’s “mega and giga projects,” with targeted training planned in construction, hospitality, health care, information and communications technology, and engineering.
It said the framework included Mutual Recognition Agreements, qualification alignment between Pakistan’s National Vocational and Technical Training Commission and Saudi technical institutions, digital labor market integration and employer-linked recruitment models.
The survey also said Pakistan had proposed a $3.8 billion Saudi investment framework, including $2.7 billion for technical and vocational education and training and $1 billion for higher education, to develop demand-driven training infrastructure, skill cities and joint institutes.
Early outcomes included more than 70 memorandums of understanding and letters of intent signed in 2024-2025, over 4,700 worker deployments after the 2024 HRLS Expo and stronger links with Saudi labor and skills platforms including Takamol, Musaned and the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation.
The survey said Pakistan was also aligning workforce planning with Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the 2034 FIFA World Cup, targeting 300,000 to 400,000 trained workers between 2026 and 2034 across infrastructure, aviation, tourism and related services.
Under the TAKMOL Skill Verification Programme, Pakistan assessed 366,157 candidates with confirmed Saudi employment visas during July-March FY2026, of whom 292,556 qualified, reflecting a pass rate of about 80 percent, the survey said.
