We hear and read much about unemployment in Saudi Arabia. According to available reports, the rate of unemployment reached 9 percent during the past year. This percentage will surely increase because of high population growth. Hearing how young Saudis are continuously searching for jobs, I cannot help but wonder where they are. Have the job-searchers become ghosts that we in the employment market cannot approach? The private sector is suffering a real crisis in finding this ghost and the crisis will get worse if the pursuit of the ghost is continued under the pressure of increased investment demands and economic expansion.
Unfortunately, the lists of the unemployed at the chambers of commerce are long and daunting. The lists are full of names of Saudis looking for jobs, but they are only names, just ink on paper. Why? Because when we call these names, we get no reply. And if we do get replies, the individuals do not show up for their scheduled interviews.
As for employment agencies, they too have lists of people seeking jobs. They also have many requests from private sector establishments that are renewed over and over without the jobs ever being filled. Private offices that are supposed to be a link between the private sector and the job-seekers do not exist. And this is contributing to the discrepancies that are a constant feature of life here.
I suggest that there be at least one office in every major city in the Kingdom for coordinating the employment of Saudis. The expense of the offices would be borne by both the job-seeker and the prospective employer. This office would standardize a procedure, making the same one followed by all agencies. The office would be connected to a data base in the Ministry of Labor and ID cards would be issued for each Saudi employed in the private sector. The mere fact of issuing the card could be considered a contract. What is even more important than this is that neither the employer nor the job-seeker would have to go through a prolonged process of submitting requests; the agency would provide a more direct method so that work could begin as soon as possible without bureaucratic delay. Immediate employment is the obvious solution needed in the Saudi employment market. If a Saudi fails to fill a job slot or leaves a job, the agency would be able to fill the vacancy at once without a waste of time and effort.
