Kingdom’s jobless rate 12.2%

The unemployment rate in the Kingdom stood at 12.2 percent in 2012 with over 588,000 jobless Saudis out of the more than 4,800,000 citizens in the working age group, a study said.
“Of the total Saudi citizens in the working age group, 3,900,000 are men. They represent 80.6 percent of the labor force,” said a survey on the Saudi labor force published in the 2012 bulletin of the Central Department of Statistics and Information.
The study was conducted among the country’s population who were in the age group of 15 years and above.
The total number of employed Saudis was around 4,200,000 representing 87.8 percent of the Saudi labor force, the study said.
The survey was conducted on samples covering 29,000 families in all parts of the Kingdom and covering all sections of society.
The results of the survey indicated that nearly two thirds of the Saudi labor force was aged between 20 and 39 years, representing 66.4 percent, while 62.9 percent of them were men.
The rate of educated workers among the Saudi labor force amounted to 97.6 percent. Of the male employees, 97.3 percent are educated and 99.1 percent among women. The study showed that 31.2 percent of the labor force held a bachelor's degree or the equivalent, followed by holders of secondary school certificates or the equivalent who accounted for 31 percent.
While 35.5 percent of the male work force held secondary or equivalent certificates, 66.9 percent women held bachelor's degrees.
The study also found that the working age group of 15-year-olds and above among the non-Saudi population amounted to 79.8 percent of the total non-Saudi population. The employed represented 99.5 percent of the total non-Saudi labor force.
The study, which started collecting data in January 2012 revealed that the labor force in the Kingdom for those aged 15 years and above was almost 10 million, representing 53.4 percent of the total population who were 15 years and older. Of them, over nine million were men.
The survey also showed that the total number of employed people in the Kingdom — including expatriates — amounted to more than 10 million, representing 94.3 percent of the total labor force. Of those, 87 percent are men.
According to the 2011 census, the Kingdom’s population is 28.38 million while the Saudi population is put at 19.41 million. The Ministry of Labor introduced the Nitaqat program in 2011 to increase the Saudi employment rate in the private sector.