45% expect pay rise in Gulf despite credit crunch

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DUBAI - Forty-five percent of employees in the Gulf region are expecting to receive a pay rise in the next six months, despite the impact of the global economic crisis, an Arabian Business survey reveals.

The Salary Survey 2009, the full details of which will go online in early March, also shows that people working in Bahrain are the most optimistic about salaries with 57 percent expecting an increase in their salaries.

By contrast, employees in Kuwait and the UAE are more pessimistic with 54 percent and 56 percent respectively saying they do not expect any added rewards in the next six months.

Those working in the oil and gas or the cargo/freight industry have higher expectations than those working in real estate or hospitality.

Only 27 percent of people working in the region's struggling property sector expect a pay rise, according to our data which was collected from more than 3,000 respondents across the Gulf states during January.

The Salary Survey 2009 will also reveal which countries are paying the best and worst salaries and which industries rank top and bottom for job security.

It will also show which countries and industries and best and worst for staff retention.

The results of the Salary Survey 2009, which were based on more than 3,000 respondents from across the GCC region, come just a day after a survey by Middle East jobs website Bayt.com in conjunction with YouGov which said there was widespread dissatisfaction about the level of salaries.

Last week a poll of Gulf companies by ORC Worldwide (Middle East) showed that 40 percent of them had already implemented or were in the process of implementing a pay freeze for some or all of their staff while 11 percent had gone a stage further and cut pay rates.

Salary satisfaction low
Salary satisfaction is running low across the Middle East, with just seven percent of residents in the UAE highly satisfied with their remuneration, according to research conducted by job site Bayt.com in conjunction with YouGov. The picture around the Gulf is similarly bleak with each of the GCC countries registering the same level of dissatisfaction regarding their salary.

The picture around the region in terms of what level of salary people receive varies widely, the survey found.

Bayt.com's regional manager Amer Zureikat said: "The relevance of such data increases manifold during a time like this - a global economic crisis - as it gives an up-to-date indication of employee sentiment, which can be used to compare people's attitudes and opinions during other financial cycles."

The data for the Salary Survey is collated in part by looking at whether average salary increases were in-line with the average rise in the cost of living.

The picture was very clear that the average salary increase did not reflect the rise in the cost of living across all of the countries. In the UAE, respondents indicated that living costs had increased by 37 percent while the average salary increase was just 15 percent. The biggest disparity in the increase in cost of living and salary raise was in Jordan, where salaries increased by 15 percent compared to the 39 percent increase in living costs.

The survey also looked at what percentage of their salary people manage to save each month. The majority of all respondents manage to save between 1-5 percent while a quarter of all respondents said they managed to save none.

The biggest savers were in Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, with 33 percent, and 30 percent respectively saving more than 21 percent of their monthly salary.

Overall, the best savers are in Bahrain and Oman, where 83 percent of residents save at least some of their salary.

Those saving the least were in Jordan, where just 54 percent saved some of their monthly wages. Just over one fifth of residents in the UAE, 22 percent, saved between 1-5 percent of their salaries.

"These figures reveal that even though some people receive much higher salaries in some countries than others, it doesn't correlate that these high earners save more money, which might have been expected," said Nassim Ghrayeb, CEO, YouGov.

The survey also highlighted the level of salary satisfaction in terms of industry, with the most highly satisfied workers were found in the oil, gas and petrochemicals sector.

The industries which provided least salary satisfaction to workers were education and academia, government and civil service and transport and travel.

Egypt and the UAE were the gloomiest countries surveyed with 30 percent and 29 percent feeling down about the future, while Oman and Bahrain's respondents were most optimistic.

© The Saudi Gazette 2009