Madiha Yaqoob
Pakistani freelancers brought in $175.44 million in July 2026, and the headline number hides the more interesting story underneath it. IT-related freelance services accounted for $106.78 million of that, up from $89.87 million a year earlier, which is growth of about 19%. Non-IT freelance services accounted for $68.66 million, up from $30.68 million, which is growth of about 124%. Non-IT work has moved from roughly a quarter of Pakistan’s monthly freelance export receipts to about 39% in twelve months, and it supplied close to 70% of the total increase.
Those splits come from State Bank of Pakistan data, reported by ProPakistani and independently by TechJuice. Most coverage stops at the $175.44 million and the 45.5% year-on-year rise. The composition underneath is what should change how a new freelancer chooses what to learn.
What counts as non-IT freelance services
The category is defined by how the State Bank codes inbound service exports, not by how freelancers describe themselves. Broadly it captures work that is delivered digitally but is not software or IT-enabled services: design and creative production, writing and translation, marketing and advertising services, business and management consulting, accounting and bookkeeping support, architectural and engineering services, education and training delivery.
It is the half of the freelance economy that Pakistan’s official narrative has historically underweighted. National policy conversation has tended to equate “freelancing” with “IT freelancing”, and the reporting categories followed. The July figures make that framing harder to sustain.
The growth rates side by side
Setting the two lines against each other makes the divergence obvious.
- IT-related freelance services: $89.87m to $106.78m, an increase of $16.91m.
- Non-IT freelance services: $30.68m to $68.66m, an increase of $37.98m.
- Total freelance receipts: $120.56m to $175.44m, an increase of $54.88m.
Non-IT contributed $37.98 million of the $54.88 million rise, or about 69%. A category that was a quarter of the base produced more than two-thirds of the growth. For context, Pakistan’s overall IT and IT-enabled services exports rose about 18% to $417 million in the same month, which is close to the IT freelance growth rate and well below the non-IT one.
Why is non-IT growing faster?
Three explanations are plausible and none of them is flattering to the “learn to code” default.
The first is base effects. Non-IT started small, so large percentage moves are easier. A doubling from $30 million is a smaller absolute achievement than a doubling from $90 million would be, and one month is one month.
The second is reclassification. Under the reporting reforms the State Bank introduced in April 2026, banks now auto-tag service and purpose codes rather than relying on the exporter to file a declaration per transaction, and the threshold for Form R submission rose to $25,000. The State Bank’s own announcement describes the change. Cleaner coding can move earnings that were always non-IT out of a catch-all bucket and into the right one, which shows up in the data as growth.
The third is genuine demand shift, and it is the one worth acting on. The categories growing fastest globally are the ones where a person applies judgement on top of a tool rather than producing a standard output from a clear brief. Marketing strategy, brand and content direction, financial modelling, operations consulting: these sit in the non-IT bucket and they are exactly the work that has held its pricing while routine execution has not. We looked at the underlying evidence in what the 2026 data actually shows about AI and freelancing.
What this changes about which skill to learn
Pakistan’s training pipeline, public and private, is heavily weighted toward development, WordPress, and general IT services. That made sense when IT was three-quarters of the receipts. It makes less sense when the fastest-growing share sits elsewhere.
The chairman of the Pakistan Freelancers Association, Ibrahim Amin, made a related point alongside the July release: the constraint on young freelancers is not only technical skill but business development, communication and client management. Those are non-IT competencies, and they happen to be the ones that determine whether you can sell a $2,000 strategy engagement or only a $50 task.
None of this argues against learning to code. It argues against assuming that IT services are the only lane with a growth story, and against dismissing design, writing, marketing and consulting as lesser choices. If you are early, our guide on getting freelance clients on LinkedIn is more relevant to the non-IT categories than a platform-first approach, because that is where those buyers actually are.
The caveat worth holding onto
This is one month of data, at the start of a fiscal year, following a reporting change. Amin also noted that the sector would need to sustain growth above 50% through the coming months for the full-year picture to shift materially. Treat the composition as a signal to investigate rather than a settled trend, and look again at the September and December figures before rebuilding a career plan around it.
Where the money still has to land
The category you earn in does not change how the earnings have to arrive. Non-IT freelance receipts run through the same channels, the same purpose coding, and the same tax treatment as IT ones. Registration and filing still determine whether you sit at the concessional export rate or the default, and the detail is in our breakdown of freelancer tax in Pakistan for 2026.
Recognition is starting to catch up with the numbers. The Pakistan Software Export Board and the Pakistan Freelancers Association have introduced the country’s first national freelancer awards, on the back of freelancers contributing more than $1.1 billion to record IT and ITeS exports in FY2025-26. Whether the awards, the training programmes and the policy attention follow the growth into the non-IT categories is the thing to watch over the next two quarters.
