Unemployment, Gendered Expectations, and Matrimonial Delay: A Qualitative Study of Educated Jobless Youth in Pakistan

Although 67% of Pakistan’s population is under 30, little is known about how graduate unemployment shapes the marriage trajectories of highly educated youth. This article explores how unemployment influences marriage prospects among educated graduates, and what roles gender, family expectations, and ethnicity play in this process. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with unemployed university graduates (15 men, 15 women), this study shows that higher education without stable employment is experienced as a perceived educational penalty in the marriage market. Families view secure work, especially public-sector jobs as a precondition for “marriage readiness.” Unemployment also renegotiates spouse selection criteria, as young people aspire to more educated, companionate, and secure unions while parents seek to align these aspirations with entrenched norms of male breadwinning, female domesticity, and “marrying on time.” This study contributes to scholarship on how unemployment reshapes life course pathways, marital negotiations, family strategies, and gendered expectations.