High female joblessness hits Saudi

Saudi Arabia is suffering from high unemployment rate among local women despite an extensive drive mounted by the world's oil superpower several years ago to find jobs for all of its citizens, Saudi newspapers reported yesterday.

Officials described the high female joblessness rate, estimated at 28.4 per cent, as a disaster and blamed social restrictions and the presence of a large number of expatriates in the kingdom, the largest Arab economy.

The problem is underscored among female university and high institute graduates as more than 78 per cent of them are unemployed, the papers quoted Saudi Arabia's Deputy Labour Minister Abdul Wahid Al Hameed as saying. "There is unfair competition between Saudi and foreign workers. We have a real female unemployment problem. The unemployment rate among women is about 28.4 per cent against 6.9 per cent among men. This is a disaster in a country that employs millions of expatriates," he said.

The papers said the deputy minister was addressing female students in Riyadh during a university gathering held to discuss the festering joblessness problem among women and demands to find jobs for graduates.

Al Hameed said the government is working on a plan to pool the efforts of the public and private sectors to create jobs for women. But he noted that many Saudi women still cannot work because of "social barriers".

He also acknowledged that some government departments, including the Ministry of Labour, still refuse applications from women to start business.

"For example, the Ministry of Labour does not accept applications from women to work as contractors unless they are from female engineers or those who have inherited the job from their relatives," he said.

Like other Gulf oil producers, Saudi Arabia has been struggling to find jobs for its own citizens and replace the dominant foreign labour, which began to stream into the region when oil was discovered more than 50 years ago. The discovery of oil triggered one of the largest construction drives in history and forced regional desert nations to rely on foreigners as they lacked skilled labour.

Saudi Arabia, which controls more than 20 per cent of the world's recoverable crude oil deposits, has been hit hardest by soaring unemployment in the Gulf given its large indigenous population, estimated at more than 15 million, more than 60 per cent of the total population of 25 million.

Official data put the unemployment rate in the kingdom at just over 10 per cent at the end of 2008 although private estimates show the rate is much higher.

According to the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the joblessness rate is expected to decline in the next few years within the 2010-2014 development plan that gives priority to finding jobs for nationals.

Citing government estimates, the chamber put unemployment at nearly 10.5 per cent at the end of 2008 and expected the rate to shrink to about 7.1 per cent at the end of the current five-year plan.

In a study, the chamber said development projects during this ninth plan would be sufficient to create jobs for hundreds of thousands of Saudis. Its figures showed demand for labour, mainly Saudi, would surge from about 7.97 million at the end of 2008 to 9.1 million workers at the end of 2013.

"Saudi labour covered about 47.8 per cent of the total workforce in 2008. The share is projected to surge to 54.1 per cent in 2014. This means the number of unemployed Saudis will be around 418,000 in 2014, or nearly 7.1 per cent compared with 10.5 per cent at the end of 2008," the study said. "We believe these are good indications of the continuation of the economic development process and the fact that unemployment is declining."

According to the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning, the bulk of the jobless people in the kingdom are Saudis on the grounds expatriates who lose their jobs leave the country.

Another reason is that the native population is growing fast and many job seekers still prefer the public sector for more financial benefits. Its figures showed about 416,000 Saudis were unemployed at the end of 2008 compared with only about 21,000 jobless expatriates.

Saudi jobless rate

Year Saudis Expats Total

2003 345,350 26,610 371,960

2004 386,573 28,701 415,274

2005 427,795 30,792 458,587

2006 469,018 32,883 501,901

2007 445,198 18,115 463,313

2008 416,350 21,298 437,648

*Source: Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning

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