Freelancing: Hope for Pakistan?

Asian Development Bank’s report shows us that they expected Pakistan to grow only by 2% in 2021 but we grew by 4%, almost doubled than the predicted rate. I am willing to argue that much growth was made possible only because of the new freelancing wave in Pakistan. This wave doesn’t come out of a happy place, it comes from despair, it comes from calculating the average human salary in Pakistan and realizing there’s no way one can rent a house with one job that is offered to graduates. Though, mostly would argue that the whole world is stuck in the same despair but when did Pakistan listen to the world or try to take the world’s perspective in the first place? 

Freelancing Wave?

If you talk to any teen or millennial, they will either have some form of ‘call center’ experience, writing experience, social media experience or graphics/development experience. The reason is the willingness to take inflation aka bull by the horns and defeat it. It was taken as a joke by parents that the internet can earn money but thanks to work-from-home sanctions put on by The Virus, every desi is able to understand the true power of the internet. Uncles, who used to poke fun at online universities had to take and give lectures online and halalify their online earning that was previously declared haram by some individuals. Students on the other hand got to pass without a test and we were able to identify how much money laundering every government/university did in the name of online learning systems because everything crashed every single time.

While every boomer-run organization kept on failing, the only industry that strived and saw progress was and is the online industry. eCommerce, call centers, writing, website development, you name it, it grew. Everything grew. Almost 5 million people switched from traditional jobs to freelance. And all for the better, we would witness more growth in these segments as we further progress.

This comes at peak time when the world is changing from web 2.0 to web 3.0 i.e. NFTs, Facebook changing into Meta and Waqar Zaka crossing millions in Crypto revenue. This is putting Pakistanis on track to maximize their potential and make their place early in web 3.0 as it is the future.

As more people realize the true potential of the Internet and how much one can earn from the gig economy/services industry, we are seeing more people join the freelancing platforms and start to make a comfortable living. The negligence of the authorities is commendable for two cases:

The Pakistani rupee has dropped to the extent that even prices of 1995 model cars are back to 2002 price points. Land prices are so high that nobody at any government grade can get their self-loan approved for a house in Islamabad. Price control that was supposedly artificial, is nowhere to be found and each day gets you more stranded in despair, and more inflated.

As this misery continues, and you open your laptop and see a 3-day long freelance project posted for $300 which is triple the minimum monthly wage, you get some hope. That hope is what caused a 4% spike in growth despite 15% inflation and 0% government level help during and after the Covid-19 crisis. The only help Pakistanis got was an Upwork account that helped them earn a few bucks on the side while they prayed that the government would show mercy and lay off some electric bill or any gas bills, but nah. But this is good, while your apney try to aim to shoot for your leg, a gora sends you a 50$ tip for each task, because he knows life is hard, particularly during Covid. This wave has helped me realize that freelancing might be the best thing to happen to Pakistan.

  For people who can speak a bit of English, for people who can use a computer, this is probably the only chance we have at a good, comfortable living. We have seen these old paper methodologies fail and we will continue to see those old methodologies fail more in the coming days because the world has changed, it’s high time we all do too.