Okaz/Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The total number of Saudis who entered the employment market during the year 2021 accounted for about 499,000, with an average hiring of 1,367 Saudis per day, according to a monitoring conducted by Okaz/Saudi Gazette based on recently released government reports.

The total number of male and female Saudi employees in the local labor market reached about 2.25 million last year, and this marked an increase of 28.51 percent while comparing to the year 2020, when their number reached about 1.75 million.

The total number of Saudi men who were employed last year accounted for about 323,000 employees, an increase of 28.09 percent over the year 2020, bringing their number to 1.47 million. The number of Saudi women who joined the employment market in 2021 reached 176,000, and this marked an increase of 29.31 percent, reaching their total number to about 778,000.

With regard to non-Saudis, the number of workers witnessed a drop of 0.97 percent during the last year, with the difference between exit and entry of foreigners in the labor market accounted for about 2,000, bringing the total number of male and female expatriate workers in the market to about 6.27 million. The number of male workers who left the market was about 59,000 while those newly employed reached about 57,000.

The Riyadh region accounted for 43 percent of the total number of jobs in which Saudi men and women work, and the number of male and female employees reached about 971000. The Makkah region comes next to Riyadh and Makkah region is followed by the Eastern Province.

It is noteworthy that around 38,854 establishments entered the Saudi labor market in 2021, bringing the total number of establishments to about 668,644, an increase of 6.17 percent with 629,790 establishments, while comparing to the year 2020. There are about 200 giant establishments, each with a total number of 500 or more workers, it was revealed in the monitoring.