Understanding the Demographics of Coworking Space Users in Pakistan
Who really uses coworking spaces? Age, gender and profession data, globally and in Pakistan, plus what it means when choosing a space in Multan.
Close your eyes and picture a coworking member. For most people in Multan, the image arrives instantly: a 24-year-old guy in a hoodie, two monitors, a Fiverr dashboard open, and a cup of chai going cold beside the keyboard.
Heâs real. Youâll find him in every coworking space in Pakistan. But heâs one member of a much bigger and more varied crowd, and the data on who actually uses coworking spaces has been quietly contradicting that stereotype for more than a decade.
This matters for a practical reason. When someone decides coworking âisnât for people like meâ, theyâre almost always comparing themselves with a picture thatâs out of date. So this guide pulls together the best available data on coworking users, first worldwide and then in Pakistan, and turns it into something useful: the six types of people who actually sit at the desks, what each of them needs, and how to tell whether a space is built for you.
Coworking Demographics at a Glance
If you only have a minute, hereâs the short version. Sources and caveats follow below.
| Metric | Global coworking members | Pakistanâs freelance and remote workforce |
|---|---|---|
| Average age | About 36 | Younger; most freelancers are in their 20s and 30s |
| Gender split | Women crossed 50% of members in 2019 | About 79% men, 21% women among freelancers |
| Largest group | Freelancers, about 41â42% | Freelancers, an estimated 3 million full- and part-time |
| Second largest group | Employees, about 36% | Remote employees and side-gig workers |
| Most common profession | IT, about 1 in 5 members | Software development, about 38% of freelance work |
| Where each group clusters | Employees in megacities, freelancers in mid-sized cities | Earnings concentrated in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, with tier-2 cities rising |
One honest note before we go further: there is no national survey of coworking members in Pakistan yet. The Pakistan column describes the workforce that coworking spaces here serve, which is very well documented. Where weâre drawing conclusions from global data, we say so.
Why Coworking Demographics Matter to You, Not Just Operators
Operators study member demographics to plan marketing. For you, the same data answers three far more personal questions.
Will I fit in? If you think coworking is for male software developers and youâre a female content writer or a 45-year-old accountant, the numbers below will probably surprise you.
Is the space designed for my working life? A space whose members are mostly corporate employees will run 9-to-6 hours. A space built around freelancers serving US clients needs to stay open past midnight. Who the members are tells you what the space prioritises.
Who will I actually meet? A large part of the value of coworking is the people at the next desk: referrals, second opinions, collaborators. That value depends entirely on whoâs there.
The Global Picture: Who Uses Coworking Spaces Worldwide
The most detailed long-running research on coworking members comes from Deskmagâs Global Coworking Survey, which has tracked members since 2010. Hereâs what it shows.
The âyoung male techieâ stereotype was accurate once
In the early years, the typical coworker really did match the hoodie stereotype: young, male, well-educated and working in tech. The first surveyâs US results found 41 percent of coworkers were under 30, 78 percent were under 40, and only 8 percent were over 50.
Thatâs where the stereotype comes from. The problem is that the picture kept changing and the stereotype didnât.
The average member is now in their mid-thirties
By the 2019 survey, the average member was 36 years old, with a growing share of both younger and older people than in earlier years. Allwork.Spaceâs 2025 industry roundup put the average age still at 36, with millennials making up about 61 percent of members.
Age also shapes what people do. Older members tended to work as consultants, while younger ones leaned towards marketing and design. In IT, members under and over 40 were almost evenly split, which says something about how long tech careers now last.
Women are now half of all members, and still underestimated
This is the most surprising finding in the research. In the 2019 survey, women crossed 50 percent of coworking members worldwide for the first time. Yet when members and operators were asked to estimate the share of women in their own space, they guessed about 40 percent, the same as in previous years.
Deskmagâs explanation is simple: women came into their spaces on fewer days of the week than men, so they were seen less often. The members were there. They just werenât counted in peopleâs heads.
The 2017 survey adds two details that matter enormously for Pakistan. The share of women dropped noticeably among married members between 30 and 50, and women, especially employees, had much longer commutes than men. Keep both of those in mind; weâll come back to them.
Freelancers lead, but employees are catching up
In 2017, about 41 percent of members were freelancers, 36 percent were employees and 16 percent were business owners with staff. By 2019, freelancers were still the largest group at 42 percent.
But the split depends heavily on where you are. Employees dominated coworking spaces in megacities and were the largest group across Asia and North America. Freelancers dominated in Europe and, worldwide, in medium and smaller cities. And who makes the decision matters: when someone else chose the coworking space for a member, roughly 85 percent of those members turned out to be employees.
IT leads, but itâs not a tech club
About one in five members worldwide works in IT, which makes it the largest single profession, but also means four in five donât. PR and marketing came second, followed by consulting and design. Among men, one in three worked in IT; women were more often found in marketing and design. Around 80 percent of members had a university education.
The Pakistan Picture: Whoâs Actually at the Desks
Coworking in Pakistan serves a specific workforce, and that workforce looks quite different from the global average.
A very young country, and a young city
Pakistan is one of the youngest countries in the world, with nearly two-thirds of its population under 30. That alone pulls the age of Pakistanâs coworking members well below the global 36.
Multan reflects the same pattern. According to 2023 census data for Multan City tehsil, about 443,000 residents are aged 20 to 29 and another 363,000 are aged 30 to 39. Thatâs roughly 806,000 people, or nearly a third of the tehsilâs 2.56 million population, sitting squarely in prime working age, in a city with a literacy rate of about 74 percent.
Freelancers are the anchor group
Freelancers are the backbone of coworking demand in Pakistan, and their numbers keep climbing. Pakistani freelancers earned a record $1.76 billion in FY2025â26, up 78 percent on the previous year, according to State Bank of Pakistan data, and industry estimates put the workforce at nearly three million full- and part-time freelancers.
What they do matters as much as how many there are. PTA insights reported by TechJuice break Pakistanâs freelance work down as 38.2 percent software development, 31.2 percent creative and multimedia, 17 percent sales and marketing support and 8.7 percent data entry, with smaller shares in writing and professional services.
That mix is shifting fast. Non-IT freelance earnings nearly tripled last fiscal year, which is why a Pakistani coworking space today holds video editors, copywriters, virtual assistants and bookkeepers alongside the developers.
Side-gig workers are the hidden segment
Hereâs a number most coworking discussions miss. Pakistanâs Labour Force Survey 2024â25 found that only 2.9 percent of employed people do gig work as their main job, but 10.6 percent do it as secondary work. Among women, the share doing gig work on the side rises to 15 percent.
In other words, roughly one in ten working Pakistanis is running a side gig: a teacher designing logos at night, a bank employee managing a Shopify store, a student writing articles between classes. These people donât need a desk every day. They need a reliable place on the days that count.
Graduates are turning to independent work
The same survey shows why so many young Pakistanis start freelancing. Unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds stands at 12.9 percent, and among degree holders itâs 10.9 percent. Many fresh graduates start freelancing while they look for a job, and some never stop. They usually arrive on tight budgets, hungry for skills and contacts as much as for a desk.
The gender gap is real, and probably overstated
On paper, Pakistanâs freelance workforce is overwhelmingly male. PTA figures put it at about 79 percent men and 21 percent women. A LUMS study of more than 16,000 Pakistani freelancer profiles on Upwork and Freelancer.com found that only 15 percent were women. Nationally, female labour force participation is about 24 percent.
But the official numbers almost certainly undercount women. Womenâs freelance income is less likely to be formalised or captured in statistics, and DigiSkills alone has recorded more than 800,000 training completions by women since 2018. Research from the Lahore School of Economics also found that women freelancers have the highest repeat-hire rate on the platforms it studied, ahead of both men and firms. Clients clearly value them, even if the counts donât show them.
The Six Types of People Youâll Meet in a Pakistani Coworking Space
Put the global and Pakistani data together and six distinct groups emerge. Most coworking members in Multan fall into one of these, and each needs something slightly different from a space.
1. The Night-Shift International Freelancer
Who they are: Developers, designers and marketers, mostly aged 22 to 35, serving clients in the US, UK, Europe or the Gulf. Their best-paid hours fall in the Pakistani evening and night.
What they need: Late opening hours, power that genuinely doesnât cut out during evening load shedding, internet with a backup line, and a quiet spot for client calls at 10 PM.
What usually fits: A dedicated desk, so their monitor, notebooks and routine stay put every day. Our load shedding guide explains why evenings are the hardest hours to cover at home.
2. The Side-Gig Builder
Who they are: Students, salaried employees and fresh graduates doing freelance work in the evenings or on weekends. This is the one-in-ten group from the Labour Force Survey.
What they need: Flexibility above everything else. They want a reliable seat on deadline days, exam weeks or outage evenings, without paying for 30 days they wonât use.
What usually fits: A day pass. Our day pass guide covers when it beats a monthly desk.
3. The Woman Professional Who Needs a Safe, Close-by Base
Who they are: Women freelancers, remote employees, home-based business owners and mothers returning to work. This group is larger than the official data suggests, for the reasons above.
What they need: Remember the two global findings: womenâs coworking participation drops after marriage, and women travel further to reach their workspace. In Pakistan both effects are stronger. Mobility, family expectations and transport all make commute distance and safety decisive. When one Karachi freelancer looked for somewhere to work in 2019, she found the existing spaces so male-oriented that she opened a women-centric space herself.
What makes a space work for women is mostly practical: a short, safe commute, a staffed reception, CCTV, controlled access, a clear code of conduct, and an environment a family feels comfortable with. âGhar walon ko tasalli honi chahiyeâ is a real requirement, not a soft one.
What usually fits: A dedicated desk in a central, well-run space close to home, so the daily commute stays short and predictable.
4. The Remote Employee
Who they are: People employed by companies in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad or abroad who live in Multan. Globally, employees are the second-largest coworking group, and in Asia theyâre the largest.
What they need: Structure. Young employees in particular donât want to work alone all the time. Gallup found 71 percent of Gen Z employees prefer hybrid work, the highest share of any generation, while under a quarter want to be fully remote. A coworking space gives a remote employee an office routine without relocating to their companyâs city.
What usually fits: A dedicated desk, and itâs worth asking your employer whether theyâll cover it. Plenty of companies will pay for a desk once itâs clear it improves call quality and reliability.
5. The Agency or Startup Team
Who they are: Two-person design studios that became six-person agencies, small software houses, and early-stage startups. Many Pakistani freelancers now work as teams delivering services together.
What they need: A door that closes, room to add seats as they hire, and somewhere professional to bring clients and candidates.
What usually fits: A private office. Our comparison of a dedicated desk vs a private office helps with sizing, and founders should read our piece on the impact of coworking on Pakistani startups.
6. The Consultant or Local Professional
Who they are: Often a little older, in line with the global finding that older members tend to work as consultants. Think chartered accountants, legal and tax advisers, trainers, architects and local business owners who donât want a full-time office.
What they need: A professional place to meet clients a few times a week, and occasional quiet time to work.
What usually fits: Meeting rooms by the hour, with day passes in between. Our post on why to stop meeting clients at cafés explains when a proper room is worth it.
How Multanâs Coworking Crowd Differs From the Big Cities
Global data has one more lesson that applies directly to Multan: city size changes who shows up.
Freelancers and small teams, not corporate floors. In megacities, coworking spaces fill up with employees of large companies renting whole floors. In mid-sized cities, freelancers dominate. Multan follows the mid-sized pattern. Most members here are freelancers, agencies and remote workers, not departments of multinationals.
Tighter communities. Deskmagâs research found that spaces in smaller cities tend to be smaller, and members often know everyoneâs name. That makes the community more useful: referrals and collaborations happen faster when people actually know each other.
A night-heavy schedule. Because so many members serve Western clients, a Multan coworking space is often busiest when Lahoreâs corporate centres have emptied out.
Location isnât destiny. Freelance earnings in Pakistan are still concentrated in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. But the LUMS study found that, holding skills, platform and gender constant, freelancers in some smaller cities out-earned those in Karachi by a wide margin. Tier-2 city talent competes on skill, not postcode. We cover the local numbers in how much freelancers actually earn in Multan and why the city is becoming a remote work hub.
Using Demographics to Choose the Right Space
The most useful thing you can do with this data is match a space to your own profile.
| If you are⊠| Ask the space⊠| Plan that usually fits |
|---|---|---|
| A freelancer serving US or UK clients | What time do you close, and what stays on during load shedding? | Dedicated desk |
| A student or side-gig worker | Can I come in only on the days I need? | Day pass |
| A woman professional | How is the space kept safe? Is reception staffed throughout opening hours? | Dedicated desk |
| A remote employee | Where can I take long video calls without disturbing anyone? | Dedicated desk |
| An agency or startup team | Can we add seats as we hire? | Private office |
| A consultant meeting clients | Can I book a meeting room by the hour? | Meeting room plus day passes |
Then ask the question most people forget: âWho are your members?â A good operator will answer with specifics, such as the mix of freelancers and teams, how many women work there, and which hours are busiest. A vague answer usually means they donât know, and a space that doesnât know its members canât be designed around them.
Finally, visit at the hours youâll actually work. A space at 3 PM and the same space at 11 PM can feel like two different places with two different crowds.
What the Data Canât Tell You
A few honest limits on everything above. The most detailed global member survey dates from 2019, and newer industry figures are less transparent about their methods. Global surveys rely on people choosing to respond, which skews towards engaged members. Pakistani data describes freelancers and workers, not coworking members specifically. And platform-based counts almost certainly undercount women.
So treat the numbers as a map, not a verdict. The best data point about whether coworking suits you is still one honest day spent working in a space.
The Bottom Line
The person in the hoodie with two monitors is still there. But today he shares the room with a woman running a marketing agency, a remote employee for a Lahore software house, a student finishing a client project between classes, and a chartered accountant whoâs booked the meeting room for a 4 PM client.
Coworking stopped being a niche for young male techies years ago. In Pakistan, where the workforce is young, increasingly independent and spread well beyond the big three cities, the real question isnât whether you match the stereotype. Itâs whether a space matches the way you work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who uses coworking spaces the most?
Freelancers. Deskmagâs Global Coworking Survey found they make up about 41 to 42 percent of members worldwide, followed by employees at around 36 percent and business owners with staff at about 16 percent. Employees dominate in megacities, while freelancers dominate in medium and smaller cities like Multan.
What is the average age of a coworking space user?
Globally, the average coworking member is about 36 years old. Pakistanâs coworking crowd skews younger because the country does: nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis are under 30, and most freelancers are in their twenties and thirties.
Are coworking spaces in Pakistan suitable for women?
A well-run one is. Worldwide, women now make up roughly half of coworking members. In Pakistan the deciding factors are a short commute, a staffed reception, CCTV, controlled access and a clear code of conduct. Visit at the hours you plan to work and ask how the space keeps the environment safe and respectful.
Are coworking spaces only for IT professionals?
No. IT is the single largest profession, but only about one in five members worldwide works in it. In Pakistan, non-IT freelance earnings grew 188 percent in FY2025â26, so writers, designers, marketers, virtual assistants and bookkeepers now share the room with developers.
Can students and part-time freelancers use a coworking space?
Yes, and many do. Pakistanâs Labour Force Survey shows about one in ten employed people does gig work as a secondary job. For students and side-gig workers, a day pass on deadline days or outage evenings usually makes more sense than a monthly desk.
Find Your Seat â Simple Spaces, Gulgasht Colony
Whichever of the six you are, Simple Spaces is built around how people in Multan actually work. 100% power backup, enterprise fiber with a backup connection, and open from 10 AM to 3 AM, Monday to Saturday, so you can work your clientsâ hours instead of the gridâs.
- Day Pass â PKR 1,000/day. Ideal for students, side-gig workers and anyone testing coworking for the first time.
- Dedicated Desk â PKR 20,000/month (from PKR 16,000/month on a 12-month prepay). Your own desk and storage, every day.
- Private Offices â from PKR 25,000/seat/month for agencies and teams of 2 to 10+.
- Meeting Rooms â PKR 2,500/hour for client meetings, interviews and workshops.
Ergonomic desks, 24/7 CCTV, a secure and respectful environment for women professionals, and a community of Multan freelancers, remote workers and founders who look a lot more varied than the stereotype.