Over 250,000 Saudi women join labor market in 15 months

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JEDDAH — More than two million Saudis and expatriates have joined the Saudi employment market during the last 15 months, according to a monitoring carried out by Okaz/Saudi Gazette.

It was revealed in the monitoring based on government reports that women made up majority of the total number of 428,000 Saudis who were employed in the local labor market during the period from the beginning of the last quarter of 2021 until the end of the year 2022. A total of 255000 Saudi women joined the labor market while the number of Saudi men who were employed during the period reached about 173,000.

The total number of Saudis and expatriates who were employed during the period reached 2.05 million. The number of expatriates who joined the labor market during the 15-month period exceeded 1.62 million, and they included 1.43 million men and 197,000 women.

It was revealed in the monitoring that the Saudi unemployment rate recorded its lowest historical levels in the fourth quarter of 2022 and this was attributed to several factors. The most prominent of these factors was the steady rise in the number of Saudis and expatriates being hired over the last 15 months. The monitoring was based on the data from the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI), the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, and the National Information Center.

It is noteworthy that the total number of foreign domestic workers in the Kingdom reached 3.6 million by the end of 2022. These included 2.63 million men, of whom the majority are house drivers, servants and house cleaners, while the number of women house workers reached 972,000.