I have written many times before about the need of finding more jobs for Saudis in the private sector in order to stop the Saudi government being the largest employer of nationals in the Kingdom.
Therefore, I was very pleased to read the results of a recent Gallup poll conducted in the Kingdom from 2013 to 2015 in which 2,535 Saudis were interviewed on the telephone about their perceptions of jobs in both the public and private sectors.
Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority said they preferred to be working in the government rather than in the private sector. This despite the fact that a majority of Saudis polled believed that salaries in the private sector were more attractive than salaries in the public sector.
“About seven in 10 Saudi nationals (71 percent) say that the statement ‘provides stable jobs’ applies mostly to the public sector, compared with 25 percent who say this mostly applies to the private sector,” said the Gallup report. “A majority of Saudis (55 percent) associate the private sector with offering attractive salaries, compared with 36 percent of Saudis who link this with the government sector,” the report added. Despite this allure of better salaries in the private sector, the poll found that most Saudis would still opt for a government job because of the perceived stability that comes with it.
The poll also found that the majority of Saudis polled, 79 percent, thought the private sector was more interested in hiring foreigners than nationals. Only 34 percent of those polled thought the private sector was committed to hiring Saudis, a sad reflection of the fact that our private sector indeed still prefers to hire foreigners over Saudis as they are cheaper labor and are perceived to work harder than nationals. This feeling of being locked out of the private sector is partly responsible for the 81 percent of those polled saying they would prefer a government job.
The Gallup pollsters point out that the Saudi private sector has for the most part failed in creating inviting work environments for Saudi nationals, pointing to an International Monetary Fund study, which found that from 2011 to 2013 the percentage of Saudis in the private sector grew by only four percentage points from 10 percent to 14 percent. The IMF also pointed out that the creation of new jobs in the private sector for Saudis would alone not be enough to attract more nationals, as the Saudis would have to be adequately technically trained in order to compete with expatriate workers.
The government renewed its Saudization efforts in 2011 by introducing the Nitaqat system in which private companies were rated according to how many Saudis they had on their payrolls and punished or rewarded them accordingly mostly with the granting or withholding of visas to bring new workers from abroad. Many businessmen have complained bitterly about the system, saying it has deprived them of the necessary manpower from abroad, alleging that Saudis for the most part demand much higher salaries, are often not trained adequately for the job or don’t have much experience and are not ready to work 12-hour work shifts since their families and friends are around them which makes them demand a healthy work-family balance.
Despite these complaints from business owners, the fact still remains, as the Gallup report points out, that Saudi private sector salaries are much lower than similar salaries in neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The report says that the average private sector salary for a Saudi is SR6,400 a month, while in other GCC countries the average monthly salary is more than double that amount at SR15,200 a month.
As we produce more and more Saudi university graduates, the marketplace is finding it hard to place them in jobs, especially the women, as the private sector is so filled with foreigners and the government sector has reached the bursting point in terms of employing so many Saudis. This imbalance needs to be redressed by training Saudi men and women to better levels so that they can compete with expatriates in the private sector and eventually replace them in their jobs that they have in the oil industry, hospitals, construction companies and other areas.
This year alone our marketplace will have to find jobs for three million Saudis and that number will rise to six million in 2030. Young Saudis should also be informed that the types of cradle-to-grave jobs that governments traditionally supplied around the world are becoming rare. The private sector for its part must create more inviting work environments for nationals. Just providing them with a higher salary than a government job is not enough to attract more Saudis and keep them in the private sector. Saudis want to feel that they are being hired because of their skills and what they can do on the job, and not just to fulfill some bureaucratic demand to have so many Saudis on the payroll. Tokenism, especially when it has been done as sloppily as our private sector has done it, has never yielded good results.
