Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to congratulate the nation and authorities for their efficient handling of the coronavirus pandemic, based on the unemployment rates cited by a tweet from the South Asia Index.

The tweet said that Pakistan had the lowest unemployment rates in the South Asian region, during the years 2020 to 2022, which also coincide with the pandemic.

However, upon closer inspection, the World Bank data, which is used as the basis of South Asia Index’s tweet, has only been recorded till the year 2020.

The data was retrieved in February 2022 but only cites employment rates till 2020, which simply means that the data recorded, does not include the years of the pandemic in Pakistan.

So not only is the South Asia Index tweet not accurate but neither are the claims that Pakistan fared the best in South Asia in terms of unemployment during the pandemic.

When data on The World Bank website is inspected closely, Bhutan had the lowest unemployment rate out of the South Asian countries till 2020, at 3.6% while Pakistan placed second with a rate of 4.3% closely followed by Nepal at 4.7%. Bhutan was not included in the tweet, whether on purpose or by oversight, still being a mystery.