To Work or Not to Work

To Work or Not to Work Sharif Al-Abdul Wahab • Al-Watan

We all know that the rule of supply and demand may benefit some at the expense of others. During the boom years of the 1980s, university graduates were pampered because there were few of them at a time of high demand for their qualifications. Graduates could take their pick of the many offers they had and employers would take them regardless of their area of specialization required for the job. All was well as long as the applicant was a college graduate. Within 10 years the trend changed dramatically and the number of graduates far exceeded the jobs available in the market. Employers became more selective and only looked for qualified applicants with good command of English. That continued throughout the 1990s, completely transforming the mechanisms of the job market and the relationship between employers and employees. Unemployment continued to rise. A quick Internet search under “unemployment” will produce hundreds of results. People keep asking why we have got to this stage. There have been a number of serious attempts in the past to address the problem, but none of them took into consideration the warning signs of economic slowdown and rising unemployment. Let’s use some mathematics. Saudis under the age of 18 make up 40 percent of the population, which translates into eight million, half of them female. Do we have four million job vacancies every four years? Definitely not. Based on this, attempts to solve the problem through the ongoing Saudization drive will not succeed and the rate of unemployment will continue to rise. Leaving people without work is dangerous and can lead to terrorism and crime. To have a solid base for tackling unemployment, there has to be long-term plans spanning 20 or more years. Such a strategy was used when Kingdom began its petrochemical industries drive in the 1970s, and now these industries have reached a very advanced stage. We need to have plans for future industries that can provide up to four million jobs every 15 years. The Malaysian experience is the best example for developing countries to adopt. The Indian experience in creating an Indian Silicon Valley is also worth studying. Our industries are still in an early stage of development, and we need to restructure and expand the industrial base, rehabilitate factories, establish suitable industries in the countryside to stop people moving into cities and introduce a unified minimum wage system for Saudization to succeed.