These are good times for Saudi Arabia, largely spurred by the global spike in energy prices, especially crude oil. The Kingdom’s economy registered in the first quarter of 2022 a nearly 10 percent increase in gross domestic product, compared to the same period last year.

But that’s not all! The International Monetary Fund also forecast that the size of the Kingdom’s economy will exceed $1 trillion in 2022, for the first time in its history.

This is being reflected, among other things, by a thriving job market that has shown signs of strength post COVID-19.

As a matter of fact, a Hays report revealed that 79 percent of the Kingdom’s employers have a positive outlook for business. Four in five employers plan to increase their company headcount in 2022 — nearly double the number of employers who said they were hiring in 2021.

What is driving this upsurge?

In addition to successfully emerging from the pandemic, new and ongoing initiatives surrounding Vision 2030 along with giga infrastructure and other projects being funded by the Public Investment Fund are creating a growing number of opportunities in the job market.

Vision 2030 which aims at diversifying the economy away from oil, is developing $1 trillion worth of new projects, which over the past four years, has given birth to 555,000 new jobs, according to the General Authority for Statistics. As part of a five-year strategic roadmap, the fund aims to invest a minimum of $40 billion a year into the domestic economy until 2025 and create 1.8 million jobs.

As part of its transformation away from being an oil and gas powerhouse, the Kingdom’s efforts to establish Riyadh as the pre-eminent business and startup hub in the MENA region is well underway.

All of this is attracting a slew of multinational corporations and global investors with commercial interests in the Middle East to set up their regional headquarters in the kingdom.

Upskilling the workforce

For this economic transformation to be successful, the Kingdom is also making sure that its workforce can compete on a global scale, by instilling values, developing primary and secondary skills, and broadening knowledge.

Saudi Arabia has taken a forward-looking approach to develop a human resource strategy which addresses the skills gap and builds talent competencies across key economic sectors.

Several effective transformational changes have occurred to enable this, including the continuance of upskilling and capacity-building operations during the pandemic.

Focusing on the youth

But Vision 2030 seeks to go far beyond. It intends to build and improve professional capacities, particularly among the youth, to prepare them for the future and assist them in seizing emerging possibilities.

While competing with global talent, this will enable effective participation of the country’s working force in ongoing local economic, social, and cultural growth. Interestingly, the local demographics favor this — as of 2022, urban population accounts for 84.7 percent or 30.36 million of the Kingdom’s population — and most urban dwellers live in or around major cities and economic hubs including the capital Riyadh as well Dammam, Makkah, and Jeddah.

This young, educated and tech savvy urban population is today redefining consumerism, travel, and commerce across the MENA region, and therefore reshaping the conventional workforce approach to which we were all accustomed.

• Stephen McNally is Chair of IMA’s Global Board of Directors for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

• Hanadi Khalife is senior director of MEA & India operations at IMA.