Qatar’s FIFA win may lure UAE engineers seeking better pay

Qatar’s successful bid for the FIFA World Cup 2022 is likely to impact the fortunes of the UAE’s construction professionals, with the former country set to spend an estimated $57 billion over the next decade on infrastructure including stadiums to support the mega event in 2022.

Recruitment and hiring experts expect a number of construction specialists currently in the UAE to migrate to Qatar in the near future as demand for engineers and other construction professionals will peak as a plethora of projects is unveiled in the run-up to the event.

 “We see a huge talent drain to Qatar across property, construction and infrastructure [sectors], which will impact salaries there but the employers can probably find the people here [in the UAE],” Matthew Carter, Managing Director at McArthur Murray, an executive search firm, told Emirates 24|7.

According to Rick Smith, Business Manager at Pathway Engineering, which specialises in construction-related recruitment, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are leading the GCC’s new projects pipeline as banks in those countries continue to advance large-scale credit for construction projects, which is also buoying up salaries for construction professionals.

“Across the GCC region, there is a pick up in the number of jobs being registered in the construction industry, especially post Ramadan. However the major influence of new mega projects is being primarily felt within Saudi and Qatar where credit is still available,” Smith told this website.

He said that this is pushing salaries of engineers and other construction professionals higher even as pay-packages of construction executives in the UAE are depressed as the market remains oversupplied with candidates.

“These projects [in Qatar and Saudi] are drawing resource from the global market and salaries are expected to grow in the coming months. The upward movement within Saudi and Qatar salaries is tempered somewhat by the UAE labour market, however, which is still significantly depressed with an oversupply of qualified candidates coupled with declining living costs leading to downward pressure on salaries across the emirates,” he said.

“This salary differential is leading to a net migration of construction staff away from the UAE into Saudi and Qatar marketplaces keeping salaries overall across the region on a par with the previous six months,” Smith explained.

Hasnain Qazi, Middle East Business Manager at Pathway Resourcing, added: “Yes we do see more engineers moving to Qatar, however, not just from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but from all over the world. Salaries will not be impacted in the UAE or Saudi Arabia as all GCC states will see compounded growth over the next 10 years given this is an emerging growth market.”

Nevertheless, analysts are citing lower pay packages in the UAE as one of the primary reasons for executives moving to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where they claim the sector’s salaries have held up much better.

Within the UAE, as Smith pointed out, salaries of construction professionals remain in a downward spiral, and analysts do not expect them to rebound in the short term.

“My sense is that salaries with the contractors and sub-contractors engaged in either building projects or civil engineering schemes are still in decline,” confirmed McArthur Murray’s Carter.

“This is driven by supply and demand and decreasing order books in the UAE,” Carter said. “The construction sector is still moving at the same levels, as nothing very special has happened to change the market,” added Konstantina Sakellariou, Partner, Marketing & Operations Director at Stanton Chase International, an executive search firm that speacialises in hiring at senior levels across sectors.

Nevertheless, Sakellariou emphasises that workers with specialised positions retain bargaining power with their employers, and have better prospects than their non-specialised peers. “The positions that are better paid and one can negotiate the most are the positions that are highly specialised and/or request long and strong professional expertise,” she told this website.

Not everyone, though, is gloomy about future salary levels and hiring trends in the sector. Some experts believe that immediate future looks bright for those in the industry.  “The construction sector has historically built a solid ‘brand’ in the Middle East as being an industry that is capable of attracting and retaining top talent from both locally and overseas,” believes Amer Zureikat, VP sales at Bayt.com, a job search portal.

“We have seen that even while companies in this sector downsized in recent years, much world-class top pedigree talent was retained and replacement talent for strategically key positions was hired with very top requirements and expectations,” he said.

“Things are looking bright for the [UAE’s] construction industry in the quarter to come with 56 per cent of employers in the industry stating they are planning to hire (surpassing the overall regional average of 54 per cent).

“As far as salaries are concerned, [our] salary survey shows that the construction industry is still amongst the highest paying industries in the region. The pay raises for the past year may not have been what professionals really were aiming at (7.7 per cent) but hopes are high for the year to come with an expected salary raise of 12.1 per cent.”

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