ISLAMABAD: Pakistani worker registrations for jobs in Qatar and Oman have slowed sharply this year, while the UAE has nearly matched its full-year 2025 total, highlighting divergent recruitment trends across Pakistan’s key Gulf employment markets.

Gulf countries employ millions of Pakistanis, providing livelihoods for households and a major source of foreign currency. Pakistan received a record $41.6 billion in workers’ remittances in the fiscal year ending June 2026, according to central bank data.

Figures from Pakistan’s Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment cover January–September 2026, while the available 2025 totals cover a full year. Comparing monthly averages indicates the pace of registrations but does not establish a like-for-like annual decline or account for seasonal variations.

“Currently, the numbers have decreased, yes. Again, as I told you, the regional tensions was one of the issues and some kind of restrictions on Pakistani workforce in some GCC countries have decreased,” Issam Baig, chairman of recruitment company Jan Mohammad & Sons, told Arab News.

Pakistan registered 35,917 workers for employment in Qatar during the first nine months of 2026, compared with 68,386 throughout 2025. That represents a monthly average of about 3,991, roughly 30 percent below last year’s average of 5,699.

For Oman, registrations totaled just 705 through September, against 9,375 for the whole of 2025. The monthly average was approximately 90 percent lower than last year’s.

Oman’s slowdown follows an already steep fall in 2025, when registrations dropped from 81,587 in 2024.

The UAE showed a contrasting trend, with 52,032 registrations through September, almost matching the 52,664 recorded during all of 2025. Its monthly average was approximately 32 percent higher than last year’s, although registrations remained well below the pace recorded in 2023, when the annual total reached 229,894.

The figures measure workers registered for overseas employment, rather than the total Pakistani workforce in each country. They do not establish the reasons for changes in recruitment.

Baig said he did not consider a lack of demand the principal problem and expected recruitment to recover in the coming weeks and months as regional conditions normalized.

He also urged Pakistan to improve workforce preparation, saying better technical and interpersonal skills could strengthen workers’ competitiveness in Gulf labor markets.

Baig highlighted Punjab’s Parwaaz Card scheme, which provides eligible overseas jobholders with interest-free loans for expenses such as visa processing, medical examinations, skills verification and airfare.

He also welcomed soft-skills training introduced by the federal Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development.

“We are doing these activities and by this we will improve our quality of manpower and workmanship sending abroad,” he said.