Gulf countries can win the global talent war

For decades, the world’s most ambitious young professionals have made a beeline for a familiar set of destinations: New York, London, Silicon Valley, Boston, Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and a handful of other global hubs. These places promised opportunity, job satisfaction and high-growth careers. Today, that promise is fading. A slowdown in white-collar hiring across the West, being felt most acutely by tech industry executives in the US, has opened a rare window of opportunity for Gulf Arab states. This is the moment the Gulf Cooperation Council can win the global talent war.

Recent reports in The Wall Street Journal paint a grim picture. Even graduates from elite US business schools — the traditional providers of executives, consultants and financiers — are taking months to land job offers. At Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, 21 percent of master’s graduates were still unemployed three months after graduation. At the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the figure stood at 15 percent, compared with just 4 percent in 2019. Georgetown University reported that fully a quarter of its MBA class was still searching for work after three months. These are sobering numbers for institutions that once served as launchpads for lucrative careers.

The reasons are manifold. Companies are cutting back on white-collar hiring amid economic uncertainty, geopolitical risk and the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence, which threatens to automate many entry- and mid-level professional tasks. Layoffs in technology, finance and consulting have flooded the US market with experienced candidates competing for a shrinking pool of jobs. As one Wall Street Journal report noted, the US added just 49,000 jobs per month in 2025 — the slowest pace in more than two decades outside major recessions — and most of those jobs were in healthcare, not business or technology.

Layoffs in technology, finance and consulting have flooded the US market with experienced candidates

Arnab Neil Sengupta

This crisis for Western graduates represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the Gulf. At precisely the moment when hydrocarbon prices are softening and fiscal pressures are rising, countries hitherto reliant on energy exports need fresh thinking, new business models and the best managerial capacity.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain all have strategies in place aimed at economic diversification. Significant investments are already flowing into AI, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy, life sciences, logistics and fintech. But capital alone may not be enough to guarantee the anticipated return on such investments. That depends on skilled engineers, product designers, data scientists, business strategists, venture capital professionals and industrial managers.

Time is also of the essence. AI data centers, advanced manufacturing projects and tech ventures will take perhaps years to mature and produce stable returns, assuming all goes well. But Gulf states facing fiscal pressures from lower oil revenues do not have the luxury of sitting back and hoping for the best. One way to bridge this gap is to aggressively attract world-class human capital that can help create entirely new revenue streams and industries, while looking forward to seeing their investments in electronics, advanced industrials, clean energy and AI pay off in the fullness of time.

To be sure, the Gulf already attracts a tremendous amount of talent. Since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Riyadh and Dubai, for instance, have drawn tens of thousands of new expatriates every year. Their booming populations testify to their international appeal. However, a substantial part of this inflow ends up in real estate, hospitality, retail, basic services and mid-level corporate roles.

What remains limited is the recruitment of innovation-driving talent from top business schools, engineering institutes, medical schools and research universities — the kind of graduates that powered the rise of Silicon Valley, Boston’s biotech ecosystem and London’s financial sector.

It is no secret that the US owes much of its technological leadership to generations of first-generation immigrants who arrived with talent and ambition. From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, foreign-born talent has powered the engines that drive entire sectors of the American economy. Fortunately, the GCC countries have the financial resources, infrastructure, lifestyle advantages and geopolitical stability to bet on that strategy — provided they act decisively.

Several forces work in the regional bloc’s favor. First, world-class healthcare, international schools, modern housing, cultural openness and physical safety make cities like Riyadh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha highly attractive to cosmopolitan professionals. Second, taxation levels here remain competitive, allowing professionals to retain far more of their income than in the West. Third, governments are increasingly generous when it comes to visas, work permits, property ownership and long-term residency — a crucial factor for young talents who prioritize families and careers.

As Western economies struggle, the Gulf is well placed to become the next magnet for global human capital

Arnab Neil Sengupta

To attract the brightest minds, Gulf countries must offer something intellectually compelling: the chance to build new institutions, industries and ecosystems from the ground up. This is where the region holds a significant advantage over Western economies that are burdened with high-tax regimes, bureaucratic inertia, regulatory inflexibility and policy rigidity. Talented tech and business professionals can speed up the implementation of the GCC states’ national AI strategies, design green industrial corridors, build fintech platforms and set up sprawling logistics networks.

Gulf governments and sovereign wealth funds can initiate the process by launching targeted global recruitment drives. Just as universities and corporations scour the world for academic talent, GCC institutions should actively court graduating master’s students and postdoctoral researchers from campuses from Michigan to Oxford. Fellowships, leadership programs, startup visas and venture funding can potentially convert uncertainty in Western job markets into opportunity for Gulf economies.

Historically, global talent has thrived where ideas matter more than connections and where failure is treated as something to learn from rather than an embarrassment. Therefore, reforms in corporate governance, regulatory transparency and institutional accountability across the Gulf region will be essential to motivate and retain elite professionals once they arrive.

The timing could hardly be better. As one Wall Street Journal analysis noted, even Harvard Business School graduates — long accustomed to near-total employment — are now facing delays and uncertainty. Companies themselves admit that AI-driven organizational restructuring could take years to stabilize. By contrast, despite a tightening job market, white-collar employees in the Gulf have so far not felt any pressure to consider blue-collar roles with pay cuts. There is no reason why thousands of high-caliber professionals who are currently underutilized and anxious in the West would be reluctant to move to a region that is eager to absorb them.

After the Second World War, the US attracted displaced European scientists and engineers, laying the foundations for its postwar technological dominance. In the 1990s, Silicon Valley’s rise was turbocharged by immigrant company founders, programmers and venture capitalists. Today, as Western economies struggle with stagnation, geopolitical frictions and technological disruption, the Gulf region is well placed to become the next magnet for global human capital. It can position itself as one of the world’s great centers of innovation, entrepreneurship and intellectual leadership.

• Arnab Neil Sengupta is a senior editor at Arab News. X: @arnabnsg