islamabad pakistans brain drain situation has aggravated with more than 760000 educated youth seeking employment overseas this year mainly because of the uncertain economic and political situation in the country according to a media report on tuesdayaccording to documents available with the express tribune 765000 people left pakistan in 2022 nearly triple the 225000 departures in 2021 and 288000 in 2020this years data also includes 92000 highlyeducated people such as doctors engineers information technology experts and accountants leaving the nationaccording to the bureau of emigration and overseas employment an overwhelming majority of the emigrants went to middle eastern countries mainly saudi arabia and the united arab emirates uae among the european destinations the preferred choice of pakistanis appears to be romaniathe effects of the deteriorating economic situation as well as the political uncertainty have begun to affect the workforce of pakistan a bureau official told the newspaper on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the mediahundreds of thousands of young men including the highlyeducated who are worried about inflation unemployment and uncertain economic and political situation are going abroad every year in search of employment he addedcashstrapped pakistan is also facing a political crisis with ousted prime minister imran khan demanding that the government announce early general elections and prime minister shehbaz sharif rejecting his plea for snap pollsaccording to the bureau of emigration and overseas employment 765000 young people from pakistan went abroad this year it also said that the number of emigrants had risen after registering a fall in two consecutive years following 625000 emigrations in 2019according to the documents those who left the country in 2022 included more than 92000 graduates 350000 trained workers and the same number of untrained labourers they also said that 736000 people went to the gulf statesthe emigrants included 5534 engineers 18000 associate electrical engineers 2500 doctors 2000 computer experts 6500 accountants 2600 agricultural experts over 900 teachers 12000 computer operators 1600 nurses and 21517 technicians the group of unskilled workers comprised 213000 driversaccording to the data over 730000 youth went to the gulf states and nearly 40000 went to european and other asian countriesthe countrywise breakdown of the data showed 470000 pakistanis headed to saudi arabia for employment 119000 to the uae 77000 to oman 51634 to qatar and 2000 to kuwaitthe data also mentioned that 2000 pakistanis went to iraq 5000 to malaysia 602 to china 815 to japan and 136 to turkey besides 478 pakistanis went to sudan in africa in search of employmentthe highest number of people emigrating to a european country was 3160 youth going to romania it was followed by 2500 to great britain 677 to spain 566 to germany 497 to greece and 292 to italy the bureau of emigrants also registered 700 people going to the united statesmore than half of those leaving pakistan were from punjabthe documents said 424000 emigrants this year were from punjab 206000 from khyberpakhtunkhwa 38000 from newlymerged tribal districts 54000 from sindh 27000 from