Skills and education increase economic productivity of individuals along with its impacts on economic and social development of an economy. Educating people and providing technical and vocational skills to human beings make them capable enough to undertake different economic tasks for income earnings, decent work, other labor market outcomes, and yield them overall social returns. The returns to schooling and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and its related labor market outcomes have continued to prove its importance in the development of human capital theory. It implies that economic challenges of unemployment and lower earnings, like those faced by youth of the poor and developing regions of the world, could be solved by better provision of education and skills for their human capital formation. Particularly, TVET is assumed to yield prompt favorable labor market outcomes for individuals in labor markets. Thus, economic challenges of unemployment and low standards of living could be better addressed in the context of TVET & schooling levels, overall human resource development, and other policy options laid down for better development of the unskilled workforce of Balochistan. The TVET sector of Balochistan is not reported well and neither is it properly analyzed to assess and evaluate its impacts for skill development and human capital formation in the province. This unsatisfactorily reported situation of the TVET sector needs a comprehensive analysis to formulate prospective TVET based labor and employment policies that would add in solving the economic challenges of unemployment, poverty, and low earning outcomes for labor force of Balochistan. This study has explored the TVET system and its linkages with labor market outcomes for Balochistan. The institutional framework of TVET system in Balochistan has been discussed in detail. It consists of both the public and private sector TVET institutes, both for males and females, in rural and urban areas of the six divisions of the province. Mainly, there are four public sector TVET departments, one TVET authority, and one regional directorate of NAVTTC established for the provision of TVET skills and education in the province. Aside with the public sector TVET provision, private sector is partially functional for skill development of the youth in the province. The private sector TVET provision is disseminated through NGOs, NPOs, small private TVET institutes, family TVET practices, and informal apprenticeships in rural and urban areas of Balochistan. The study has also analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT-analysis) of the TVET system that is explored to have a realistic weak picture of the overall TVET system existing in the province. The SWOT analysis also points towards standardization and upgradation of TVET skills, competence-based TVET skills, TVET curriculum development relevant to demand-driven TVET skills, introduction of TVET skills for the newly initiated China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects on emergent basis, functionality of B-TEVTA as per its mandate, coordination of cascaded/fragmented TVET system, unification of TVET standards for its certificates and diplomas, establishment of formal career counseling and job placement offices, TVET accreditation, public-private partnership in TVET sector, development of provincial skill information system (B-SIS) and labor market information system (B-LMIS), decentralization of TVET system, development of provincial TVET policy, TVET skills demand mapping, and other attributes of labor market outcomes to yield better socio-economic returns to the provincial labor force. One of the contributions of this study lies in using the research methodology of tracer survey to generate tracer survey-based primary data for the sample of 1364 TVET qualified individuals and their labor market outcomes in the select rural and urban areas of Balochistan. Secondly, a wellstructured and detailed questionnaire has been developed as a research tool with the help of desk Page 15 of 317 survey, field survey in local labor markets, insights from key informants, TVET workers, and TVET institutional practitioners. The designed research tool encompasses important and relevant variables relating to TVET such as, TVET levels, TVET Institutional Status, TVET curriculum, Relevance of TVET with labor market outcomes, Employment, Earnings, human capital & demographic variables, Household variables, and vulnerability/non-vulnerability status of TVET qualified individuals along with other relevant variables. It is considered that this survey tool may also be used as a reference scaling and starting-point survey tool for future research in the area of TVET and its labor market outcomes. Thirdly, the data of TVET qualified vulnerable groups including handicapped/disabled, imprisoned, refugees, and the poor has also been collected along with the data collection of the TVET qualified non-vulnerable group. The data of both the vulnerable and non-vulnerable sample of TVET qualified individuals has been used to empirically estimate the labor market outcomes differentials for the two TVET qualified groups of the labor force. Fourthly, a composite index for indicating the need of improvement in eight TVET component has also been constructed in this study. This index for indicating the need of improvement in multiple TVET component is used as a four-category discrete choice dependent variable for modeling and estimating the need of improvement in TVET qualification which have linkages with labor market outcomes. The descriptive statistical data analysis confirms the linkages of TVET system with different aspects of labor market outcomes in selected rural and urban areas/markets of Balochistan. To conduct further in-depth analysis of the linkages between the TVET system and its labor market outcomes, econometric estimation has been carried out by using the model of modified Mincerian Earning Function (MEF) to assess the earnings returns to different TVET levels, the model of Multinomial Logit Model (MNLM) to empirically estimate the impacts of TVET trade/skills on labor force status (LFS) of TVET qualified individuals, and Partial Proportional Odds Model (PPOM) to model and empirically estimate the linkages between indication for improvement in multiple TVET related components and their linkages with labor market outcomes. The modified MEF is estimated through the Two-Stage Least Square (IV2SLS) technique to assess the earning returns to different TVEL levels for TVET qualified labor force. The TVET parameter estimates reveal that TVET qualified individuals with 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months of TVET are estimated to experience 5.4%, 9.85%, and 7.1%, respectively, increased earnings as compared to the earnings of TVET qualified individual with 3-months TVET as reference category. One additional year of general schooling will contribute to increase earnings by 7.5% in IV2SLS estimates. Similarly, the impact of having non-vulnerable status leads to increase the earnings by 5.6% as compared to the TVET based earnings of a vulnerable TVET qualified individual in the selected rural and urban areas of Balochistan. The results of most of the other explanatory variables are in line with results of other Mincerian based research studies in the national and international literature. Post estimation statistical tests also validate the model specification, variables selection, and justification for IV2SLS technique used in this study. The MNLM estimation results comprising of coefficients, odds ratios, and marginal effects imply that the explanatory variables of TVET level of 24 months, TVET institute with satisfactory physical infrastructure, TVET helpfulness for current career, and TVET quality improvement index are shown to increase the likelihood for a TVET qualified individual to be in a paid employed status relative to being in the unemployed status. However, the results for being a male gender, nonvulnerability status, working in rural markets, TVET levels of 12 and 36 months, TVET accreditation, and TVET qualification from private TVET institute are reported to decrease the likelihood of being paid employed status relative to being unemployed status. The results for the contrasting categories of self-employed versus unemployed show that all the educational levels, TVET level of 24 months, TVET quality improvement index, TVET helpfulness for current career, Page 16 of 317 and TVET importance for current career increase the likelihood of being self-employed, relative to being to unemployed. While being a male TVET qualified, having accredited TVET qualification, having 12 and 36 months of TVET qualifications, and non-vulnerable status decrease the likelihood of being self-employed, relative to being unemployed. The post estimation tests of MNLM validates the model specification, variable selection, and other aspects of statistical justification for using the model. The partial proportional odds model (PPOM) has been applied to model and empirically estimate the linkages between indication for improvement in multiple TVET related components and their linkages with labor market outcomes. It shows impulse from the labor force to give feedback to about their TVET qualifications and their TVET institutes to get to know how much more improvement is needed to be introduced in their TVET programs for getting positive labor market outcomes in the province. The nature of the discrete choice dependent variable and results of statistical tests for the violation of parallel lines assumption qualify/suggest the suitability of PPOM as a good fit of model and an appropriate estimation technique to empirically estimate the abovementioned relationship. The results show that TVET qualified individuals with the attributes of non-vulnerable status, male gender, public sector TVET qualification, and more hours-worked indicate less need of improvement in multiple TVET components. However, being educated TVET qualified individual, additional levels of TVET qualification, being female, and additional TVETbased labor market experience indicate higher needs of improvement in multiple TVET components. The model specification tests provide justification for using the PPOM from among the family of discrete choice models. The study provides significant and important policy insights for the development of TVET system, initiation of tracer studies in TVET sector, establishment of Balochistan labor market information system (B-LMIS), introduction of relevant TVET trades/skills for successful implementation of mega development projects like CPEC and natural resource development initiatives, as well as for overall socio-economic and sustainable development of the least developed province of Balochistan." xml:lang="en_US